


closing circles, shutting doors

by bluejayblueskies



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: (also generally mild with specific cw for major), (at least until the end of s5 happens), (generally mild with specific cw for major), Angst, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Fluff, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Whump, Whumptober 2020, not a lot! but it is there, specific content warnings/tags in chapter notes, what's the opposite of a fix-it fic? that's what this is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:49:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 32
Words: 43,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26768290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluejayblueskies/pseuds/bluejayblueskies
Summary: "It is always important to know when something has reached its end. Closing circles, shutting doors, finishing chapters, it doesn't matter what we call it; what matters is to leave in the past those moments in life that are over."- Paulo Coelho-----Fulfilling Whumptober 2020 prompts in the context of ways to end Jon and Martin's stories
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 119
Kudos: 139
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	1. table of contents

**Author's Note:**

> Hello all! This is a collection of oneshots written for Whumptober 2020 that feature possible endings to TMA, diverging from MAG 180. Most of them are unhappy (re: the graphic depictions of violence and major character death warnings) so proceed with caution if that isn't your thing.

  1. **_table of contents_**



  1. **_the threads that bind_**



_prompt:_ shackled

_summary_ : Jonah is killed and the threads that ensnare Jon pull taught.

  1. **_once hidden, twice blind_**



_prompt:_ collars, kidnapped

_summary:_ The Web delivers Martin to Jonah, and Jon chases after him.

  1. **_chrysalis_**



_prompt:_ altered states

 _summary:_ Jon is _all eyes._ Martin does what he has to.

  1. **_origami_**



_prompt:_ caged, collapsed ~~building~~ world

 _summary:_ In a crumbling world, Jon is Atlas with the sky upon his back.

  1. **_marionette_**



_prompt:_ failed escape, rescue

 _summary:_ Jon is taken by the Web, and Martin and Basira stage a rescue.

  1. **_audio memoriae_**



_prompt:_ get it out, no more, stop please

 _summary:_ Jon can’t stop throwing up tape ribbons. Annabelle has a way to help.

  1. **_ruminations_**



_prompt:_ support, carrying

 _summary:_ Jon makes a statement in a Web domain and gets a bit more than he bargained for.

  1. **_unmarked graves_**



_prompt:_ abandoned, isolation

 _summary:_ Martin lets go of Jon’s hand, just for a moment, and gets trapped in a Lonely domain.

  1. **_eucharist_**



_prompt:_ for the greater good

 _summary:_ The Web ties Jonah and Jon together, so any physical harm to one also harms the other.

  1. **_iron and wine_**



_prompt:_ blood loss

 _summary:_ Jon goes into Helen’s corridors and reaps the consequences.

  1. **_ashes to ashes, dust to dust_**



_prompt:_ struggling, crying

_summary:_ The Panopticon crumbles. Martin makes it out. Jon doesn’t.

  1. **_slipknot_**



_prompt:_ broken bones

 _summary:_ Martin breaks a bone. Basira takes a shot.

  1. **_chimera_**



_prompt:_ memory loss

 _summary:_ The fears are eradicated and the world goes back to normal. Jon does not.

  1. **_i shall come out gold_** ****



_prompt:_ fire

 _summary:_ The Archives burn. The Archivist burns with them.

  1. **_ascension_**



_prompt:_ possession

 _summary:_ Elias Bouchard dies, and Jonah Magnus takes a new body.

  1. **_hypothesis_**



_prompt:_ hallucinations

 _summary:_ A series of events that never occurred, experienced by the Archivist at Hilltop Road.

  1. **_spun silk_**



_prompt:_ i did not see that coming

 _summary:_ The Web takes over a world that is rightfully theirs.

  1. **_cicatrix_**



_prompt:_ panic attacks

 _summary:_ Jon and Martin survive the apocalypse, and they deal with what comes after.

  1. **_accident’s design_**



_prompt:_ grief, mourning loved one

 _summary:_ Jon destroys the Spider, and Martin is caught in the crossfire.

  1. **_precipice_**



_prompt:_ toto, i have a feeling we’re not in ~~kansas~~ this reality anymore

 _summary:_ Jon slips through the crack in reality at Hilltop Road in search of an answer and finds himself alone.

  1. **_tendrillar_**



_prompt:_ i don’t feel so well

 _summary:_ Melanie, Georgie, and Jon fall out of Helen’s corridors. Only two of them come out unscathed.

  1. **_wilting lilies_**



_prompt:_ withdrawal

 _summary:_ The world goes back to normal, and Jon refuses to be the Archivist anymore.

  1. **_a rose by any other name would smell as sweet_**



_prompt:_ shackled

 _summary:_ The world goes back to normal, and many days without sleep catch up to Jon and Martin all at once.

  1. **_absolution_**



_prompt:_ forced mutism, sensory deprivation

 _summary:_ Jonah is not the king of a ruined world and is extremely displeased about this fact. He takes his revenge on Jon accordingly.

  1. **_the armed eye beholds the stars_**



_prompt:_ blurred vision, ringing ears

 _summary:_ The Web helps the world go back to normal, and Martin finds himself once again sitting beside a hospital bed.

  1. **_acherontia atropos_**



_prompt:_ blindness

 _summary:_ Jon blinds himself. Nothing changes.

  1. **_parted with sugar breath_**



_prompt:_ ~~un~~ natural disasters

 _summary:_ The world breaks apart and is swallowed whole.

  1. **_shattered glass_**



_prompt:_ accidents

 _summary:_ Jon kills Jonah. Martin is caught in the crossfire.

  1. **_every kiss a cursive line_**



_prompt:_ reluctant bedrest

 _summary:_ Jonah dies, Jon loses his eyes, and the world offers them a short respite.

  1. **_ignes fatui_**



_prompt:_ wound reveal, ignoring an injury

 _summary:_ Jon hides an injury. Martin finds out, and hurt/comfort ensues.

  1. **_closing circles, shutting doors_**



_prompt:_ left for dead

 _summary:_ Jon steps through the crack in reality at Hilltop Road and cannot return. Martin learns to live without Jon in a world reborn.


	2. the threads that bind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No.1 prompt: _shackled_
> 
> cw: numbness, bondage/restraints, off-screen character death, mild body horror

Jon can’t feel his hands.

It’s such a small thing to be focused on, really. When everything else is going so terribly, horribly wrong. But it feels so… human, in a way. To hurt is simple in this new world; pain is as easy as breathing, and there’s no respite from fear and terror. Numbness, then, almost seems a blessing.

Below him, someone screams, and Jon wishes that that numbness spread to his soul. Then, at least, he could stop feeling—

_Guilty. Terrified. Curious. Satiated. Eager._

Then, at least, he could stop feeling _._

It hadn’t even been Jonah, in the end. He’d come so far, sacrificed so much—

_“I can do this, Jon. If… if it means killing him, it’ll be worth it. You have to trust me.”_

_“No, no, I can’t- not if it means losing—”_

_“Jon, **do you trust me**?”_

_“… of course I do, Martin. Always.”_

—and Jonah Magnus hadn’t even done him the courtesy of being _alive_ when he’d finally, _finally_ reached the place that made every nerve in his body alight with a terrible rush of heady joy that wasn’t his own, burning through him and flushing out everything that wasn’t _Seeing._ Because whatever was left wasn’t Jonah Magnus. It wasn’t _alive._ Just another puppet, pulled by strings that Jon could see, now, latticed throughout the framework of reality and twisting through bone and sinew. It made Jonah’s mouth smile and made him say, “Hello, Jon. I’m so glad you could join us. We’ve been waiting, you know.”

Jon opened his mouth and static poured out, undercut with a million different statements of pain, and Jonah looked at him with pity. “Yes, I suppose so,” it mused, cocking its head in a series of minute _clicks._ “We do rather need you, though. Without the lynchpin… well, all of this would fall apart. And we wouldn’t want that, now would we? Not when we’ve worked so hard. _Sacrificed_ so much.”

_“Martin, please. Please, don’t- I need you, please don’t—”_

_“It… it was never going to be forever, was it?”_

_“But it wasn’t supposed to be **you.** You- you don’t deserve—”_

_“But when have any of us ever gotten what we deserved?”_

How, exactly, he’d managed to cut the strings holding Jonah’s mouth in its sickening grin, he doesn’t know. But that unmoving mouth had said, with perfect clarity and exacting disappointment, “Pity.”

And then the threads that had wound throughout Jon’s veins for years tightened with a scream of agony, and the world wasn’t kind enough to allow him to slip into unconsciousness.

Jon can’t feel his hands. But he can feel everything else. The thousands of tiny threads that lace through him, twitching in time with the screams and sobs that come from a million suffering people. The eyes that press down upon him from above and around and below and within, wide and never blinking and always watching and wanting _more._ The nerves in his body, alight in a constant state of excitation, both channeling and powering the fear that flows out of and through him. The fear that nestles within him, thrumming hot and heady in his mind and reminding him of the fact that here, he is alone, and everyone he has ever loved is dead, and he will never die. Here, he is needed. Here, he is _wanted._

Here, he is _used._

He just wishes he were still able to scream.


	3. once hidden, twice blind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No. 2 prompt: _collars, kidnapped_
> 
> cw: bondage/restraints, hostage situation, gun violence, knife violence, blood, spider imagery

_When Jon returns from the buzz of fear, the taste of the statement still on his tongue, Martin’s gone._

_No. He… he’d just stepped to the side, slightly out of view, out of earshot, out of respect for Martin’s desire to keep distant, separate. He’d done it a dozen times, a hundred times. This shouldn’t be any **different.**_

_Martin’s name is almost drowned out by the clanging of bells as a thousand tortured souls desperately hope to be dug up. It sickens Jon that the sound seems to him almost like music. For a brief, terrifying moment, he thinks Martin’s been swept under, buried below earth and rock and cloying sod. But he’s… he’s gone. And Jon can’t See him._

_All he can see is a lattice of spider webs, leading nowhere._

_Well. Not nowhere._

* * *

The collar that wraps around Martin’s neck and keeps him firmly chained to the ground at Jonah’s feet is shining silver, polished almost to an obsessive gleam, and it takes every bit of strength left within Jon not to be violently ill.

“Let him _go._ ” It’s calm, dangerously so, and Jon _knows_ that Jonah knows he won’t get a second chance to comply. He _also_ knows that of the two of them, only one is powerful enough to win this fight, and he really, _really_ likes his chances.

Jonah’s smile is thin and sharp. “No, I don’t think I will,” he says, and he casually places a foot on the end of the chain, pulling it taught. The strangled choking sound Martin makes sends every nerve within Jon alight with hot anger.

“I wasn’t _asking._ ”

Every eye in the world turns as one to face them, and through his own, Jon can see two hundred years of pain and suffering and fear reflected within Jonah’s, waiting to be turned inward and to _consume._ It wouldn’t even be so long and dramatic of a process as Jon’s done in the past. Just a single thought, a single point of intent, and—

“You forget,” Jonah says, “that _I_ am the one in charge here, _Archivist._ ”

And then there’s a gun pressed to the side of Martin’s head, and everything falls away.

“No, _don’t_.” It’s as instinctual as breathing, by this point. Begging to be spared from death. He’s just so used to it being his _own_ life on the line. It cracks his carefully maintained mask, and raw terror filters out from beneath.

“Don’t _what,_ Jon?”

The safety clicks off.

“ _Please._ ” It’s quiet, so quiet amongst the loud, but Jon’s afraid anything louder might break him. “You… you’ve made your point. Now let him _go._ ”

“You misunderstand me.” The smile Jonah gives him is cold and just a bit displeased. “Martin will be staying here. It would be _quite_ rude to reject such a generous gift from the Mother of Puppets. _You_ will be… well, I suppose you can go wherever you please. Though should you, ah, _try_ anything, I hope this encounter has been most illuminating on what the consequences of that action will be.”

Jon can’t look at Martin. He just… he _can’t._ But Jon Knows that Martin’s crying, and that he’s in pain, and that there’s a knife in his pocket, and that Jon can’t help, and—

And that Martin’s hands aren’t tied. And that Jonah is now so very, very close to the ground.

“I… I understand,” Jon says, but the eyes don’t falter. They remain fixed on Jonah, and _only_ Jonah, as Jon says, “You don’t have to… I won’t _try anything_ again.” They don’t blink as Jonah nods, like a proud parent, and says, “I’m _so_ glad to hear that, Jon.” They just stare, focused, as the safety clicks back on.

The silver-sharp of a knife flashes, and a million eyes all blink in unison.

It feels a bit like going halfway blind when Jonah dies, if that were even possible, but it certainly hurts the same. Every part of Jon screams in pain and screams to watch, to drink in the fear as it leaks from Jonah, body and soul.

He grits his teeth and looks away.

There’s blood coating the collar when Jon scrabbles at it with shaking hands, the cool metal slipping ceaselessly under his fingers. There’s no key, but it still pops open when Jon commands it to with static coloring his voice, and then Martin is in his arms and he’s sobbing and there’s blood in his hair and on his cheeks and mixing with the salty tears that drip onto the stone floor beneath them.

“I’m sorry,” Martin says through gasps. “Jon, I- I was waiting, and then I- I just, I looked away for one second and then I- there were these _webs,_ and these _legs,_ and I couldn’t find you again, and it was so dark, and I didn’t mean to _leave_ you—”

“It’s not your fault,” Jon murmurs, over and over and over again, and he kisses the side of Martin’s head. “You’re okay now. We’re okay now.”

Martin hiccups, buries his face deeper into Jon’s shoulder. “Y- yeah?” It’s a shaking question, so unsure, a fragile glass with cracks already spread through.

Jon thinks about the weight of the stares of a thousand eyes, heavy still and growing heavier by the second as he’s forced to take the weight of what was once meant for two. He thinks about the uninterrupted screams of a million trapped souls, unaware that anything at all has changed. He thinks about the threads still laced through Martin’s bone, muscle, and sinew, spiraling off in a hundred different directions and tying him to a picture that Jon can’t understand the shape of yet.

“Yeah,” he says, and he squeezes Martin tighter and tries not to think at all. 


	4. chrysalis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No. 3 prompt (alternate prompt 6) - _altered states_
> 
> cw: scopophobia, body horror, gun violence, implied mercy killing

It’s a few days before they reach the Panopticon that Martin notices the eyes.

Or, perhaps they notice _him_ first. Because there’s a tickle, beginning on the back of his neck and traveling down his spine, that he almost doesn’t notice because _watched_ is a feeling as natural as fear or pain in this place, and what’s another hair stood on end?

Then, another eye blinks open just shy of Jon’s hairline, and Martin’s suddenly _very_ aware of the dozens of others that have their gazes fixed upon him, hidden beneath clothing and skin.

He screams, and the eyes shut in unison as Jon looks at him with his very normal, very concerned eyes and asks if he’s okay, _what’s wrong, did you see something_?

And Jon’s already suffered through so much, and the eyes are gone now—or maybe had never even been there at all—and they’re getting close to the next domain. So, Martin forces a smile and says, “Just a- just a spook, sorry. Let’s keep going.”

And that’s that.

_“Oh god. Oh my god, Jon. Jon!”_

_Static from a hundred different tape recorders hits Martin like a tidal wave, and he falls to his knees, clutching his ears and trying desperately not to scream, if only to drown out the sound._

_“Please, please stop, please come back Jon, please don’t leave me, please don’t—”_

_The weight of the eyes becomes too much, and Martin cuts off with a groan and squeezes his eyes tightly shut._

_It doesn’t make a difference. He can still see everything._

“I- I don’t understand.”

Jon’s standing in the center of the Panopticon, in that tower where so long ago, Martin had held a knife in his hand and had been given the opportunity to end it all. Just a quick motion, and it would have been done. It would have been _easy_.

However Jonah Magnus died after the world went wrong, it had _not_ been easy. Not with eyes like that.

“This doesn’t make any sense.” Jon stares at Jonah’s body like it’ll somehow give him the answers. (It’s not like it had ever done that when it was _alive_ , much less now.) “He _can’t_ be- if he’s, he’s already dead, then how do we—?”

Jon takes a long, shaking breath and looks at Martin desperately. “ _How do we still fix this?_ ”

On Jon’s temple, an eye blinks.

“I…” _Say something, just say something._ “Jon, you…”

“It was all for nothing,” Jon says softly, even as another eye appears on the side of his neck. The dozens of others sitting beneath fabric blink in time with its emergence. “Everything we, we did to get here—Daisy, Basira, all those- those people, trapped in the Institute, whose fear I just- I just _took_ , because I said it was _important_ , that it _wouldn’t matter_ because once we _got here_ , I would need it to be able to beat _him,_ but if he’s already _dead_ , then—”

There are eyes on Jon’s knuckles now, swiveling in time with his increasingly wild gestures.

“Jon, I _really_ think you should—”

“—then it really is just like before, isn’t it? Trying to justify _hurting_ other people, because I said I _needed_ it. And if he’s dead, then—”

“Jon, _please_ , just _listen to—_ "

“—then this really is all for me, isn’t it.” Jon laughs, just once, a broken thing. Martin can see a small, staring eye on the tip of his tongue. “It’s like he said, I suppose. ‘I am the king of a ruined world, and I shall never die.’”

“ _Jon!”_

Jon looks at Martin, and all of the eyes look too. “Martin, what—”

The room _erupts._

_“It wasn’t supposed to be like this!”_

_Martin forces himself to open his eyes, to look up, bit by bit, from the ground. At some point, it had become hardwood, but Martin doesn’t know if that means that they’re not in the Panopticon anymore, or that reality is just fractured enough that everything’s bleeding together._

_“Wasn’t supposed to—”_

_“Wasn’t supposed to—”_

_“Wasn’t supposed to—”_

_“Everything ends, Martin.”_

_Martin sobs. A hundred eyes sob in unison. “Please, just- just come back to me, Jon. We- we were going to be happy.”_

_We were going to be **happy.**_

“I _can’t._ ”

“Yes, you _can_ , Martin. You’re probably the _only one_ who can.”

“Okay, then I _won’t._ ”

Martin refuses to look at the gun. Basira just looks sad.

“Yeah,” she says, gentler than he’s ever heard her before. “You will. Because he’s… he’s gone, Martin. Like Daisy was gone.”

“No, _no,_ he- he _can’t_ be- Basira, he’s _right there!_ ” Martin doesn’t think he has any tears left, but as hot, salty tears begin dripping down his cheeks once again, he barely finds it within himself to be surprised. “He’s right- he’s right _there._ ”

Because if it _wasn’t_ Jon, it would be running, right? It wouldn’t just be _watching_ , with eyes that fold in and around themselves and don’t blink—not anymore. Not when there’s so much to watch.

Martin can still see _Jon’s_ eyes, brown and kind and watching him with something Martin _swears_ is love, is compassion, is everything Jon is and more.

The eyes don’t blink, and Martin has to look away.

“Yeah,” he says, barely more than a whisper. “Yeah, okay. Just- just a few more minutes, please.”

Basira’s eyes are full of an agonizing pity, but she still presses the gun into Martin’s hand. “A few more minutes. But it’ll only get harder.”

The metal is cold under Martin’s skin. He hates it.

“I know.”

_Martin’s standing, now, and it **hurts** , and the tears are still hot and sticky on his cheeks, but he’s standing, and he’s taking slow, heavy steps toward Jon, because this is **not** how this is going to end. He **refuses** to let it be._

_“Jon, can you hear me?” Another step. “It’s okay. I- I’m here. I- I understand, I know you don’t want to hurt me—”_

_Another screech of static almost sends Martin to his knees. He clenches his jaw so hard he sees stars but keeps upright. “It’s okay,” he repeats. Another step. “I love you, Jon.” A small laugh. “I **adore** you, Jonathan Sims. I adore your jokes, even if I don’t always laugh at them. I adore how you gesture when you get excited, and how you do that thing with your nose when you’re thinking something rude but are really trying not to say it. I adore how you trust me enough to tell me things about yourself that you haven’t told anyone else, and how there’s still so much I don’t know about you. But I want to know, Jon.” Another step, and he’s standing next to Jon, and the weight of the eyes is almost suffocating. “I want **you.** Always.”_

_Slowly, oh so slowly, Martin reaches for Jon, his hand trembling slightly. “I’m not going to leave you,” he says, and his fingers close around Jon’s wrist._

_The eyes all scream as one._

“I love you, Jon,” Martin says. Somewhere deep in the recesses of his mind, he thinks that this is it: the last _I love you_ that they’ll get. It doesn’t quite pierce through the numbness. “I really, really do.”

The thing that had once been Jonathan Sims stares at him and within him. It makes no move to escape. A pair of soft brown eyes silently beg.

Martin pulls the trigger.

_It’s quiet, in a world unwatched. Martin sits by an empty grave, and lets the rain fall on his cheeks, and wishes his heartbeat weren’t so loud._


	5. origami

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No.4 prompt - _caged, collapsed ~~building~~ world_
> 
> cw: claustrophobia, eye trauma, unreality, crushing

_Everything’s breaking._

_(The world.) (The Panopticon.) (Martin.)_

_And Jon is Atlas, with the weight of the sky on his shoulders._

_And_

_he’s_

_crumbling._

* * *

Martin coughs up red dust; it smears across the back of his hand, and it tastes of iron and filth and something strangely sweet. Though that might be the concussion talking.

“Jon!” His voice is hoarse. He coughs, once, and almost doubles over in pain.

There’s no answer. There’s just dust.

* * *

_linchpin(n.) – the person or thing that serves as the essential element in a complicated or delicate system or structure_

_WARNING: DO NOT REMOVE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES  
_

* * *

“Martin!”

It’s dark, so dark. Jon blinks, and the dark blinks back. He can’t think; the thoughts keep slipping away like runny paint, splashes of shadow on a black canvas.

The Eye has been blinded, and a seen world made unseen cannot hold its own weight.

Reality folds, once more, and Jon screams.

* * *

_“Are you sure?”_

_Jon lets out a short, almost choked, laugh. “No. God no.” Still, he presses the lighter into Martin’s hands. Gold gleams in the sickly red light of the sky._

_“Jon, you need to be **sure** —”_

_“Martin, **please.** ”_

_It’s silent for a long while. Then, a pair of soft hands cradle Jon’s face, and he tries very, very hard not to cry at their touch._

_“Okay.” A gentle kiss, to his forehead. “Okay.”_

_Jon tells himself he won’t look as the sterilized knife, still radiating heat, draws ever closer to his eyes._

_He still can’t help but watch._

* * *

Martin can’t breathe. He wonders, only briefly, if this is what it had been like—in that coffin, in the Buried—before another crease forms in the world and sends a _crack_ down his leg that probably should have him screaming in pain but fits neatly into the haze of contorted agony his life has become.

No, Martin isn’t Buried. He’s caged. And the walls are closing in.

The lines of reality have all blurred. What was once a house now lies flat, a mess of jagged lines along the ground, its inhabitants twisted and broken beneath its folds. The sky has dipped to meet the ground, and parts have dipped further and merged with the molten rock beneath. The eyes have shut and melted, painting the horizon with runny white, but Martin can still feel the fear that they ooze, radiating like shockwaves along the earth.

Martin can’t see Jon, and he can’t breathe.

* * *

_Among the agony, Jon feels the first stone fall._

_“Jon,” Martin says, and Jon scrabbles until his hands find Martin’s shirt; he latches on tight. “Jon, I’m here. What… what’s happening?”_

_Jon’s mind lands on the explanation, and falters. “I… I don’t know.”_

_The second stone falls harder than the first, and brings with it an avalanche._

_“Jon!” Martin sounds so far, so far away. Wasn’t Jon just holding onto him? “Jon, wait! Jon, the building, it’s—”_

_Jon blinks, and in a flash of brilliant agony, Martin’s gone._

_The world continues to crumble under its own strain, and Jon braces himself._

* * *

Jon’s following the cracks that lattice underneath his feet. He aches, from bone to muscle to skin, and the world pulses in time with his heartbeat. The cracks pulse as well, to the beat of a different heart.

_Martin. Martin. Martin._

“Martin!”

There’s nothing but darkness. And the darkness says, in a voice swallowed by the earth but still so familiar: _“Jon.”_

* * *

_It hurts, to carry the world. Jon knows he can’t hold on for much longer. He knows that he doesn’t have the power to do so anymore._

_Martin tries to help. But Jon can sometimes remember that dirt fills Martin’s lungs and that so many of his bones lay fragmented and embedded in muscle, and at those times, he presses harder upon the sky and tries to imagine a world where this is not his fault._

_Reality lets out a final breath, a ragged exhalation, and crumbles entirely._


	6. marionette

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No.5 prompt: _failed escape, rescue_
> 
> cw: spiders, manipulation, bondage/restraints, gun violence, nausea/vomiting, swearing

“For the record, I _hate_ this plan.”

“Yeah, well, if you can think of anything better, I’m _all_ ears.”

Martin waits. When Basira doesn’t respond, he sighs and says, “Yeah. This is it, then. So, are we good? Because I _really_ don’t want to wait any longer.” Something twists, deep in his stomach. “I… I’m afraid we might already be too late.”

Basira’s hand travels, briefly, to the gun strapped to her hip. “Yeah. Yeah, we’re good.”

Martin feels a bit nauseous. “Good.” He steels himself, then turns to face the house that had once been Hilltop Road. “Then let’s go.”

* * *

Jon thinks he sees an opportunity, when Annabelle Cane leaves the house. “Be back in a flash,” she says with a Cheshire cat smile, and then she’s gone.

The webs are sticky and tightly wound around Jon’s wrists and ankles, pinning him neatly in place against the wall like a mounted butterfly. But he twists, and struggles, and screams, and manages to rip an arm free. Then a leg. And then he’s collapsing onto the floor, his muscles screaming from disuse, his chest heaving in equal parts exhaustion and agony.

It takes him too long to get to his feet and stagger toward the door. That was his mistake, he thinks distantly, as he’s woven back into place in the webs that crisscross the house. He was _too slow._ He’d only been able to take a single, euphoric step over the threshold, a single breath of tantalizingly fresh air, before a pair of spindly black legs wrapped around him quick as lighting and pulled him back, his scream cut off by the slam of the door. The Spider was quick, and he should have been quicker.

He’s caught, a fly in a web, and it won’t be long before he’s consumed.

* * *

The door won’t _open._

“Banner start, Martin,” Basira whispers. “It’s not like _we go in through the front door_ was ever a good plan to begin with.”

“Yeah, well, it’s the Web—trying to outsmart it is kind of off the table,” Martin hisses, pulling his attention away from the door for a moment.

When he looks back, the door is ajar.

They stare at it for a few seconds. “Great,” Basira says finally. “Because that’s not suspicious as hell. _Martin, don’t—_ ”

Martin pushes the door open and steps through.

“Welcome,” Annabelle says, and the plastic smile on her face reminds Martin unsettlingly of a ventriloquist’s doll. “We’ve been expecting you.”

There’s a moment of unsettling silence. Then, quietly, Basira says, “We?”

* * *

There are spiders in his throat.

There are spiders in his veins.

There are spiders in his eyes.

_All_ of his eyes.

But Jon can still see. He can see segmented legs, and hairy abdomens, and fangs that puncture skin and sclera. He can see the threads that wrap in and around him, knitting themselves in line with his muscles and pulling him taught. He can see the web, knotted around him in a pattern far too intricate to be anything other than the product of years of subtle stiches.

He can see the Spider, and the Spider can see him.

The Spider lays its final thread, and pulls it tight.

* * *

It’s Jon, but it’s not. Martin tells himself that, as a hundred threads pull and twist and walk Jon’s body across the floor in a series of not-quite-human motions, too angular in their design to be natural. The _not_ is apparent in the way that Martin sobs at the sight, or in the way that Basira instinctively draws her gun, snapping a quick, “What the _hell_ are you playing at?” at Annabelle where she smiles benignly from the corner of the kitchen. It’s apparent in the way that the thing that’s not Jon sits at the table and says, in a voice so horribly familiar yet so gratingly wrong, “Why don’t you sit, Martin? We have much to discuss.” It’s apparent in the way that Martin unthinkingly takes a seat at the table, without willing his body to move.

The _Jon_ is apparent in the desperate, pleading look Martin can see when he looks into Jon’s eyes. And that’s all Martin needs to have hope.

“Fine, then,” Martin says tightly. He won’t look at Annabelle, but he can feel her eyes like weights on the back of his neck. “I’ll listen. But not until you give Jon back.”

Annabelle laughs lightly, and Jon mirrors the motion perfectly. “I’m afraid that’s not my decision to make. But you _will_ listen, Martin Blackwood. Of that, I am certain.”

And Jon begins to speak. And Martin begins to listen.

* * *

Jon’s screaming, but no one can hear him. He’s crying, but no tears spill down his cheeks. He wants to wrap his arms around Martin, and hold him tight, and press kisses to his forehead and nose and lips, but instead he sits at a table and smiles and tells Martin that everything’s going to be okay. That the Mother of Puppets has a plan, and it’s ultimately to the benefit of the world, so Martin need not worry about the Spider as he does the Eye. That once the Spider is done with Jon, it will give him back.

At this, he wants to laugh, to scream, to cry, because the lie is hot and sticky on his tongue, and it tastes of poison. But instead, he places a hand on Martin’s cheek and says, so sweetly, “I do keep my promises, don’t I, Martin?”

The threads that wrap around Martin’s body guide him into a nod, and Jon wants nothing more than to be able to cut them. But his are thicker, more consuming, and much, much older, so much so that he thinks that, were they removed, he may cease to exist entirely.

“Lovely,” Jon says with a smile. “I trust you know where the door is.”

* * *

“Fuck this,” Basira says, and pulls the trigger.

* * *

_Moment One:_

Annabelle Cane smiles, unharmed. “You forget,” she says, glassy-eyed, calm, “that this place does not answer to you.”

_Moment Two:_

Blood begins to blossom, scarlet and thick, against a dark coat.

_Moment Three:_

“Oh,” Jon says, in a voice all his own.

_Moment Four:_

“Oh,” Annabelle Cane says, in a voice that has perhaps never been her own.

_Moment Five:_

The strings are cut, and Jon collapses.

* * *

_dark; cold; blind._

“—Christ, what were you _thinking_ , Basira? God, look at him, he—Jon? Jon! Jon, can you hear—?”

_dark; cold; blind_

“—think we’re losing him. Jon, you have to wake up.”

“Why isn’t he healing? He- he should be _healing._ _Why isn’t he—_?”

_dark; cold; blind_

Silence, but for the sound of quiet, shaking sobs.

Jon tries, desperately, to hold on.

* * *

Jon wakes up to a splitting pain in his chest, an even more splitting pain in his head, and a cat sitting on his feet.

The groan Jon lets out when he tries to sit up must have been loud enough to hear from the other room, because it’s less than five seconds before the door’s flung open and Martin rushes in, startling the Admiral so badly that he leaps off the bed and runs through the door into the other room.

“You scared the Admiral,” Jon croaks, and _god_ , his throat hurts. What had he been—?

_Oh._

Jon remembers the legs, scurrying along the sides of his bones, and is immediately sick, managing to lean over the side of the bed before regurgitating the meagre contents of his stomach. In less than a second, there’s a warm hand on his back and a voice saying, “Jon! Are- are you okay? God, no, of course not, you were _shot_ , but I meant- Christ, you know what I meant.”

Jon coughs and immediately regrets it as it sends a fresh wave of pain throughout his abdomen. It’s a moment before he has enough breath to say, shakily, “Oh, god. The- the house, Annabelle, I- what happened?”

Martin helps Jon lean back in bed, and he continues to rub soothing circles into Jon’s shoulder as he says, “I don’t know about Hilltop Road, or- or Annabelle. We- um, Basira, she- I don’t know how much you remember, but she, uh, shot you, and that seemed to break through whatever the Web was doing to you. But only because, um. You died for a bit? Which I, hah, didn’t think could _happen_ anymore, but then you stopped _breathing,_ and I- I just kept seeing you lying in that hospital bed.”

Jon reaches, despite the pain, and lays a careful hand on Martin’s cheek. It’s wet with tears. “Oh, Martin. I’m sorry.”

Martin smiles and reaches up to cup Jon’s hand with his own. “It- it’s fine. You’re back. I suppose it- it _was_ like back then, in a way.”

Quietly, Jon says, “They Eye didn’t want to let me go.”

“Yeah, well, for once I _agree_ with it on something.”

Jon smiles softly. “You know there’s really no _it_ to agree with, Martin. The Eye is—”

“Yes, yes, it’s unfathomable, closer to a thought than a person or an object, like a color comprised of fear, I know. But it’s also staring at us _right now_ from the sky, so I think I’m entitled to refer to it as an _it._ ”

“I… I suppose.”

“Back from the dead again, then?” Georgie says, coming in through the door and leaning against the wall. Melanie and Basira are close behind; Melanie has the Admiral cradled in her arms, and her fingers are slowly carding through his fur.

Jon gives her a weak, tentative smile. “It appears so.”

Melanie sighs. “Well, that’s one ‘will-this-fix-the-world?’ option taken off the list, I guess. What’s that, number 20 out of, uh, infinity?”

“We’ll get there,” Basira says curtly. “For now, we should regroup—figure out our next move. We’re not safe here, but it’s better than where we were before, so we have some time, but not much.”

Jon shifts, and he can’t quite suppress a wince. “Enough time for a nap?” he says with a wry smile. “I still feel a bit like I’ve been- well, like I’ve been shot.”

“Technically, I saved your life,” Basira says, but she pushes off the wall and heads toward the door. “Like I said, we don’t have much time. Just… just come out when you’re ready.”

Georgie and Melanie follow her out, and then it’s just Jon and Martin again. They’d shifted after Georgie had come in to slot their hands together, fingers interlocking, and now, Martin rubs small circles with his thumb on the back of Jon’s hand.

“Do you think it’s still possible?” Martin asks quietly, staring at the door like it’ll somehow give him all the answers. “To fix the world? The Web, Annabelle, Hilltop Road… that had been our biggest lead, after the Panopticon, and it almost got you _killed._ ”

Jon squeezes Martin’s hand gently. “I don’t know.” It’s true, and it feels good to have genuine ignorance. “But what else is there to hope for?”

“Yeah.” Martin lifts Jon’s hand, presses a soft kiss to the back of it. “Yeah.”

In the corner, a spider scuttles through a crack in the wall, disappearing from sight.


	7. audio memoriae

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No.6 prompt: _get it out, no more, stop please_
> 
> cw: vomiting/nausea, body horror, non-consensual surgery, manipulation

Jon and Martin stare at the white-paneled house in front of them. “Doesn’t look so bad,” Martin says lightly, but his hand is squeezing Jon’s to the point of pain, and Jon is squeezing back in kind. “I mean, compared to- to the rest of the world, it’s rather benign, don’t you think?”

“I think that’s rather the point,” Jon says quietly.

Martin shivers, only partly because of the cold. “Right, yeah. Domain of the Web and all that, I suppose. And you’re sure—?”

“I wouldn’t have brought us here if we didn’t need to be.” It’s said with far more certainty than Jon feels. Had he brought them here, to Hilltop Road? Or had it come to them?

“Okay,” Martin says, in that way he does when he doesn’t believe Jon but isn’t going to say anything more on the matter. “Then, um. Lead on, I suppose.”

Why Jon stops before the front door and knocks twice, he doesn’t quite know. But as soon as his fist connects with smooth wood, he knows he’s made a terrible mistake.

The door opens, and he’s swallowed whole.

* * *

_There’s something in Jon’s throat. He coughs, against his better judgement, and it shifts, sending him into a coughing fit that has him doubled over and has Martin rubbing his back and asking, “Jon, are you okay? What’s wrong?”_

_Jon tries to answer and instead gags on whatever obstruction is lodged in his throat. His stomach heaves, and shining black ribbons spill out of his mouth and pool on the ground, covered in a slick shine of stomach acid and blood. The idea that that had, in fact, been his stomach nags at the back of his mind._

_“Oh Christ,” Martin says, and he presses the back of a hand to Jon’s forehead, like he’s checking for some sort of fever, searching for a rational explanation when there’s clearly not one to give. Then, hesitantly: “Um. Are those…?”_

_Jon looks away from the ribbons, nausea rising within him again, and his eyes land on a tape recorder, sitting on the ground next to him and whirring away gently. Its shining black ribbons spin and spin and spin._

* * *

“What… what are you doing? No, wait, don’t—”

Something sharp slices neatly through the skin of Jon’s stomach, and he screams. He pulls and pulls against the rope binding him to the table, and Annabelle Cane pulls and pulls at the shining ribbons that slip free from the slit in Jon’s skin, and _Martin, where’s Martin?_

“This would be easier,” Annabelle says, “if you stopped moving.”

“Stop,” Jon gasps. “ _Please._ Just- just let me go. And- and Martin, don’t _touch_ him—”

“Martin is perfectly fine.” Annabelle gives another _tug,_ and Jon sees stars. Over the top of his screams, Annabelle continues mildly, “He’s comfortable. Safe. For as long as this takes, that is, and well… that might be a _very_ long while. You’ve got _quite_ a lot of audio archived, after all. Now, hold _still._ ”

Ribbons cut Jon’s insides, drawing new pain with every twist and tug, and he wishes he still had the ability to lose consciousness.

* * *

_“Jon—”_

_“I’m **fine,** Martin.”_

_“Uh, no. Try again. Because this is the **third** time you’ve- you’ve thrown up **tape recorder ribbon,** Jon. Last I checked, that’s the opposite of **fine**.”_

_“What do you want me to say, Martin?” Jon sighs, and it sends a rolling pain down his esophagus. “That I’m scared? That I’ve somehow become **less** human? That I am an omnipotent avatar of an all-seeing god of fear, and that I still don’t know what’s happening to me?”_

_“Yeah, actually.” Martin brushes a gentle hand against Jon’s cheek. “Because I can’t **help** if I don’t know.”_

_Softly, almost brokenly, Jon says, “I… I don’t know if this is something that can be fixed, Martin.”_

_“Yeah, well, you said that about the world too, so we’ll just add it to the list, then.”_

_Martin offers Jon a smile, one that Jon can’t return, and a hand, which after a brief moment of hesitation, Jon takes._

_They begin to walk again, leaving the shining coils of tape far behind them._

* * *

“Mmm, you’ve been busy, Archivist.”

Jon’s voice is long gone, ripped away by screams and sobs and pleas of _get it out, please no more, just **get it out** , _and so he can only moan softly as another ribbon slips free. He’s sure that by now the pile of shining black has surpassed his own body in size, but still they come, unravelling from within him in twists of pain that have become familiar, though nowhere close to comfortable.

“I suppose it’s no surprise you came here,” Annabelle continues. “You’re… _at capacity,_ you might say. An Archive with no more room for new stories. We’re just cleaning out the clutter here, you understand. A necessary process. And don’t worry—we’ll take very, _very_ good care of your tapes. I’m sure they’ll come in handy soon enough.”

Jon stares at the ceiling and tries not to think about the tape recorder sitting in the corner of the room, spinning its endless tape into the cavity of his chest and quietly cataloguing his pain. All fear in this new world has its place, after all.

All fear has its place in the Archive.

* * *

Jon can barely stand when Annabelle shows them the door. Martin’s hardly any better, but he still supports Jon’s weight as they hesitate on the threshold of Hilltop Road, desperate to leave yet not quite able to, still a captive of whatever strings run deep through this place. Jon feels _hollow._ And hungry. So, so hungry.

“So lovely to see you both, as always,” Annabelle says lightly, as if they’d had any choice in the matter. “I look forward to our next meeting. Perhaps somewhere a bit more… _visible,_ don’t you think?”

She looks at the Panopticon, towering in the distance, and it looks back. A small smile rises to her lips, and it sends a fresh wave of nausea through Jon that almost has him doubled over and retching again. Not that he’d have anything left within him to lose.

“Thanks, but no thanks,” Martin says tightly, and he pulls Jon more firmly to his side. “I think you’ve done enough, to be honest. So, we’re going to have to pass.”

Annabelle’s smile grows incrementally wider. “Oh Martin, I _do_ like you very much. But I’m afraid that wasn’t a request.” She steps back into the house. “Travel safe,” she says, just before the door closes between them with a heavy _click._

Wordlessly, Martin guides Jon down the stairs and away from the house, only stopping when it’s faded enough into the fog to become hazy, almost unrecognizable. Then, he slumps, and they half-collapse onto the hard-packed dirt below.

A low moan of pain escapes Jon, and Martin immediately says, “God, I’m sorry. I just- fuck, Jon, are you okay? I- I kept trying to get in there, to _help_ , but I- I couldn’t _move_ , and they just kept telling me that it was _fine,_ that you were _fine,_ but then you- you started screaming, and—”

Martin presses a fist to his mouth, but it doesn’t stop the tears that are spilling now from his eyes, or the choked sob he can’t quite suppress. “I couldn’t _move,_ ” he repeats, barely more than a whisper. He reaches for Jon, hesitates for a moment, and then pulls him in for a tentative, careful embrace. Jon lets himself melt into Martin’s arms and tucks his head under Martin’s chin, and for a moment, it doesn’t hurt. “I’m sorry, Jon.” Martin breathes in, and Jon can feel the shaking guilt in his voice as he repeats, “I’m so, so sorry.”

“Oh, Martin.” Jon’s voice is hoarse, barely there, but he forces out the words. “It’s not your fault.”

Martin lets out a small, trembling breath. “I know,” he says, and he squeezes Jon a little tighter. “That’s not… that’s not what I meant.”

Jon presses his face into the crook of Martin’s neck and just _breathes._ “I know,” he echoes.

Somewhere, out of sight, a tape recorder whirs. And as Jon presses a soft kiss to Martin’s jaw, he can’t help but feel that it’s in that hollow space within him, waiting.

He is so very, very hungry.


	8. ruminations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No.7 prompt: _support, carrying_
> 
> cw: spiders, manipulation, panic attacks, gun violence (mentioned)
> 
> note: this one is a continuation of chapter 5: _marionette_

Jon still can’t quite stand. His legs feel weak, wobbly, like a fawn fumbling its way into oncoming traffic. He’s gripping Martin’s arm like a lifeline as they wade through the latest nightmare domain on their way to…

Well, to whatever will fix the world. Though Jon’s becoming less and less convinced that it exists at all.

Jon’s foot catches on a tree root, and it’s barely a stumble, but it still sends pain shooting up his legs and radiating throughout his body. A small, distressed sound slips out, unbidden, and Martin stops suddenly, dragging Jon to a halt alongside him.

“All right, that’s it. I’m carrying you.”

Jon flushes slightly. “That’s- that’s really not necessary—”

“Jon, you’re in _pain._ You were _shot._ And- and god knows what else, when you were…” Martin sucks in a breath. “Just. Just _please_ let me help you, okay?” Then, a bit louder: “We _probably_ should have just waited a few more days before leaving.”

“Not my fault, Martin,” Georgie calls back from a few feet ahead. “You know that the protection doesn’t last long. We would have been worse off staying.”

Sullenly, Martin says, “Yeah, yeah, I know. That’s not really _helpful_ right now, though, is it?” He turns back to Jon, gives his hand a gentle squeeze, and smiles a gentler smile.

“Martin, _no._ ”

* * *

Jon presses his face against Martin’s neck, mostly so he can’t see the smirk Georgie’s giving them. “Shut up,” he mumbles. He can’t see her face, but he gets the distinct impression that her smile is wider now.

“I didn’t say anything.” There’s a pause. Then: “Perhaps we should get a little backpack to put you in, like we did with the Admiral.”

“D’you think that would work?” Martin says lightly, with a hint of humor.

“I’ve changed my mind,” Jon says sullenly. “I’d like to be put down now.”

“Guys,” Basira says sternly. “A bit of discretion? We’re not exactly traveling with a _low profile_ right now.”

“It’s fine,” Jon says automatically, the familiar buzz of static filling his mind. “We’re safe here. Though I may, ah. Have to stop soon.”

There’s a chorus of groans. “God, _really_ Jon?” Melanie says. From her backpack, the Admiral lets out a yowl. “See, even the Admiral is upset.”

“Again, not a choice. It’s better than the alternative, as you know.”

Basira shudders. “Yeah, I remember. Never knew there was so much to say about flesh-eating parasites.”

“Oh god, don’t remind me,” Melanie groans. “I’m going to have nightmares about that once the world goes back to normal.”

A hush falls over the group, as it so often does when the topic inevitably swings back to _fixing the world._ Jon doesn’t know which of them will be the first to admit that it isn’t possible.

He just knows it’ll hurt.

* * *

_She opens her mouth on instinct, but that is a mistake. The spiders swarm around and through her, dancing on her tongue and scuttling down her throat. She tries to cough, and they enter her lungs._

**_Just a few days,_ ** _one of them whispers. **You wouldn’t leave me just because of a few days, would you?**_

_Another crawls into her ear and says, **You’re so pretty, you know. It’s just a shame about the weight. Have you tried cutting carbs? You should try that. I just care about you, that’s all.**_

_Stop, she wants to scream. But there’s legs on her tongue, and fangs sink down. **I love you, of course. No one else does, but I will. You’re so lucky, you know. To have me. And I’m not going anywhere.**_

_The spiders scuttle off her skin, through the roots of half-truths that stick up from the ground and threaten to drag her down, and begin to make their home in the Archivist._

Jon’s eyes refocus, the statement slipping from his tongue. He looks down.

And screams.

* * *

Jon’s shivering in Martin’s arms, and he can’t seem to stop. Every time he begins to relax, lets an infinitesimal fraction of the tension bleed out of him, he _knows_ he can feel those legs again, crawling under his skin and digging into his muscles in a raw agony, and his entire body seizes once more.

Martin had kept the spiders from reaching his eyes, when he’d heard Jon’s scream and had rushed over to find him collapsed on the ground, tiny black shapes scuttling over every inch of exposed skin. They’d been speaking, whispering things into his ears about _your fault_ and _better off dead_ and _burden_ , but his mind had numbed to anything but the legs that scurried across his skin. How long until they burrowed deep and stole him again completely?

“Jon! Jon, they’re gone. Can you hear me? Jon!”

Martin’s hand cupped Jon’s face, tilting it so Jon could see Martin’s eyes, wide and alight with an intense fear. “You’re okay. They’re gone, you’re okay. It’s- it’s not the same as before. I promise.”

In a broken voice, barely more than a croak, Jon said, “I can still _feel_ them there, Martin. They’re- they’re still _there._ _Inside_ of me. I- oh, god, they’re in my lungs. Martin, I can’t- I can’t _breathe.”_

“Okay. Okay, just- just do this, okay? Five counts in, seven counts out. Here, just- just do it with me.”

Martin counted, slowly, and with every grating second Jon felt phantom legs ghost down his spine, weaving thread through his joints and covering his heart in a shining gossamer web. But Martin was staring at him, _through_ him, and so Jon steeled himself and drew in an agonizing, rattling breath that tasted of mildew and blood. The motion sent a numb pain shooting throughout his abdomen, and _oh. The gunshot wound._

Jon wasn’t in the house anymore. Jon was here, with Martin and the others. Jon had been shot, and he had died, and then he hadn’t, and he trusted Martin with his life, so if Martin said they were safe, then Jon would believe him.

Jon managed one breathing cycle before the pain became too much, and he collapsed back into Martin’s arms.

* * *

“Is he okay?”

Basira’s voice floats in from the other room, which isn’t particularly difficult given that this place—which, Jon Knows, had once been an elementary school—doesn’t have doors.

“What do you think?” Martin’s voice is sharp, undercut with worry. “He was taken by the _Web._ You had to _kill him_ to get him out of there.”

“I _meant,_ ” Basira says tightly, “is he okay to travel? This place isn’t safe.”

“Newsflash, Basira! Nowhere’s safe! That’s sort of the point!”

“I am _not_ doing this again—”

“Do I get a say in the matter?” Jon croaks, loud enough that it cuts through whatever argument was simmering just below the surface, seconds from erupting. Not that it’s ever been anything other than the _we’re traveling with the person who ended the world and so if something’s not safe there’s only one person to blame_ argument.

They think they’re being subtle, having it behind Jon’s back. They forget that he can see literally _everything._

“Christ, Jon,” Martin says, and then he’s kneeling next to the armchair that Jon’s curled up in with one hand on Jon’s. “How… how are you feeling?”

_Tired. Scared. Restless._

_Itchy._

“Never better,” Jon says with a groan. “It’s time to head out, then?

Martin’s brow furrows. “Are… are you sure, Jon? We- we can wait, it’s really no—”

“No, we really _can’t_ wait,” Basira interjects firmly. “I am sorry, Jon. If we had more time, then yes. We could wait. But this place hasn’t been protected, so we’re likely to get killed if we stay any longer than we already have. Which has _already_ been too long.”

Jon stares at the peeling wallpaper. It probably used to be a cheery yellow, dotted with cartoon crayons and bubble letters. Now, it’s stained with something brown, and the letters have oozed down the wall in a runny mess of pastel. “I… I understand.” He pushes at the edges of the chair, tries to stand, and immediately collapses again as legs that are hardly his own anymore refuse to take his weight.

Martin’s eyes are sad, undercut with a fear that Jon can feel in the back of his mind, as he strokes a soft thumb over the back of Jon’s hand and then raises the hand to his lips, pressing a soft kiss to the inside of Jon’s palm. “Come on, then.” He stands, extends a hand. “I’ll carry you.”


	9. unmarked graves

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No.8 prompt: _abandoned, isolation_
> 
> cw: implied sexual abuse, implied child abuse

It’s so cold, in the fog.

_Jon! Jon, where are you? It’s… it’s so cold here. I… I think I’m lost._

It would be the last domain before they reached the Panopticon, Jon had said. He’d been walking so fast, something that could be mistaken for excitement hastening his steps if Martin didn’t see the way his hands shook, or the way he worried his bottom lip between his teeth. His hand clung tight to Martin’s, and he wouldn’t _stop_ even when his eyes began to glow a sickly green and his mouth opened, unbidden, and words began to spill out, tumbling and tripping over one another.

“Jon, let’s just- just _slow down_ ,” Martin said, pulling firmly on Jon’s hand. Jon wasn’t a strong man by any means, but he pushed ahead with an intensity that made Martin stumble as he pulled back, and his hand just… slipped out of Jon’s.

It was only for a second. The warmth, the rough texture of the burns on Jon’s hand—it was only gone for a second.

Martin reached for Jon’s hand again, and met only fog.

Where had the fog come from? What… what had Jon been saying?

_Jon, please. I… I’m so alone. I don’t want to be alone. I- I can’t be here. I don’t **want** to be here, I don’t **want** to be alone. I’m **not** alone. So where **are** you?_

This place was supposed to be his. It whispers to him, words of welcome and reassurance. _You’ll be happy here,_ it says. _You know you’ll lose him eventually, but here, you won’t have to **feel** it. Here, in this place built around your very soul, you can be **home**._

There was a woman, Jon had said. Martin remembers his words now—a statement, spilling out like water from an overfilled sink, with no pause or respite to remove the stopper and release the pressure, to let the water run its own course. She wandered the rows of graves, staring at names she’d once known, people who she’d once loved. Or perhaps not. It’s so hard to remember what was love and what was just obligation, an expected devotion.

_Harrison Beachman_

_1950 - 2016_

_Loving Father, Devoted Husband_

It was fine, he’d said. This just meant that he loved her. This was normal, just something that fathers did. She could trust him; no need to tell her mother, or her brother, or the other adults who said, in sickeningly kind voices, “Oh, how sweet—you and your father must be very close.” They wouldn’t understand. They wouldn’t know what it felt like to be loved so deeply.

When he’d slipped from the ladder and broken his neck, deep mourning and sick relief consumed her in equal measures, colored with that hot fear that, even though she was old enough now to understand the truth of her childhood, she had lost the only person who had ever truly loved her.

The fear pierces through the fog and nestles in Martin’s chest. And he does not want it.

_This place, it’s… it’s not **me** anymore, Jon. I don’t understand—where are you? This isn’t- this isn’t like the last time, I can’t- I can remember you, so why can’t you find me? Why… why won’t you find me?_

Martin sits at the base of his mother’s headstone and watches the fog roll over the ground for miles before him. People fade in and out of the mist, tears streaming silently down their cheeks as they mumble the names of those they’ve lost, or those they never had to begin with. Sometimes, the ground opens up, and they’re swallowed. But their headstone is never marked. Never remembered. Lonely and lost, even in death.

Had Jon noticed that he was gone? When their hands had slipped apart and the mist had taken him, had Jon felt Martin’s absence as acutely as Martin had felt Jon’s? Or had the fear continued to consume him, driving him ever forward toward the tower Martin can still see looming in the distance, toward the eyes that stare down at him, waiting. Had he thought to look back? Had he realized that the actions he’d taken to keep Martin safe, to keep moving forward, to not stop in this place that wanted so badly to claim Martin as its own, had secured their separation in the end?

Perhaps he’s forgotten that Martin exists at all. Perhaps Martin is just another unmarked grave, lost and forgotten even by time.

There’s no way out. Martin’s checked. This place isn’t for him; this place _is_ him, in all the ways that that big, empty house hadn’t been. There, he was Lonely.

Here, he is alone.

And as what passes for hours turns into days turns into months, and the world continues to writhe in collective agony, he begins to think that it’s for the best.


	10. eucharist

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No.9 prompt: _for the greater good_
> 
> cw: blood/bleeding, suicide/martyrdom, depression/denial

The knife rips a jagged line across Jonah Magnus’s shoulder, and Jon begins to bleed.

Martin is breathing heavily, the knife clutched in his hand stained crimson red, and he’s moving toward Jonah again—like they’d agreed, standing just outside the Panopticon where the Eye began to merge with itself and its vision blurred, reviewing their plan a final time—so he doesn’t see Jon stagger, catching himself against a wall and feeling hot, sticky blood begin to soak into his shirt. “This is all a bit clumsy, don’t you think, Martin?” Jonah says, with a smile that makes Jon’s stomach turn. “Not your best work, I’m afraid. But A for effort, I suppose.”

“Oh, I’m not finished,” Martin says, the dangerous edge to his voice accentuated by the way he holds the knife ever so slightly closer to Jonah. “You think you’re- you’re _invincible,_ sitting up here above the rest of the world, but you’re not. You can bleed just like anyone else, so you can _die_ just like anyone else.”

Jonah’s smile grows a bit wider. “I’m sure. But you may want to… _reevaluate_ your current situation before doing anything rash _._ ”

“No! No, you don’t get to- to distract me, or beg for your life, or whatever this is! You just don’t want to admit that- that we have you cornered.”

Jonah eyes the knife in Martin’s hand with some contempt. “I would hardly say _cornered._ I do believe you’ve rather overestimated your comparative strength to mine. I simply thought you might want to know the effect any sort of… _damage_ you cause me may have.”

Jon’s within himself enough now to say, a bit unsteadily, “Martin, I- I think you should—”

“ _No,_ Jon, can’t you see? He’s- he’s making excuses, trying to get in our heads, but it’s _not going to work._ Not this time. You don’t get to just- just _end the world_ and expect everyone to be okay with that!”

“ _Martin,_ ” Jon says, more insistently.

“ _Jon_ , can we just—?”

Martin turns to look at Jon. And his words grind to a halt.

“Wh… what?” Martin says distantly. He looks at Jon’s shoulder, then Jonah’s, then at the knife still clutched in his hand, stained with a dull crimson. His eyes are wide with agonizing fear and sharp concern. “Oh _fuck._ Jon, are you—?”

“Yes, I’m- I’m okay.” Jon’s smile of reassurance turns into a bitter glare as he turns it toward Jonah. “You did this.”

Jonah’s grin is like ice down Jon’s veins. “In part, yes. Though I can’t take all the credit, of course. The Spider has been quite useful in the past, and calling on her favor in this regard was a… surprisingly _simple_ affair. A few threads here and there, woven between the words that made this- this _kingdom_ we now rule—well, it’s much more straightforward than the intricacies the Spider typically employs.”

Quietly, Jon says, “We?”

“Of course.” Jonah extends his hands, gestures to the world around them. “For better or for worse, this is just as much your world as it is mine.”

“Don’t,” Jon says sharply. “Don’t pretend like we’re equal. Like you didn’t _use_ me as a tool in your- your _grand plan_ to become the immortal ruler of a desolate wasteland. Funny that you didn’t say ‘we’ when talking about how you would be the _king of a ruined world._ ”

At this, Jonah looks a bit annoyed. “Necessary sacrifices, I suppose. Though the perks certainly outweigh the shackles.”

“So what,” Martin says, his voice shaking slightly. “If- if you’re hurt, then Jon…?”

“Then Jon will be hurt in kind,” Jonah finishes, and the hint of glee in his voice makes an angry heat rise within Jon, alongside something else that’s hard and heavy and nestles in his chest, pulsing in time with his heartbeat.

“That’s- _Christ,_ that’s—” Martin looks at Jon, almost pleadingly. “So we’re just supposed to let you- let you _sit_ here and watch the entire _world_ suffer for all eternity?”

_Eternity._ No, it won’t be eternity, Jon thinks. In this world where all fears are realized, though the Eye oversees them all, the End will eventually lay its claim to all that can still fear it. Even in this place of pain and terror, all things end, and inevitability runs thick as tar beneath reality in pulsing black vines that wrap their way around every living, thrumming soul. Including Jonah Magnus.

Including him.

Slowly, oh so slowly, Jon begins to draw his knife.

“Oh, come now Martin,” Jonah says. “It won’t be _that_ bad. After all, you’ve already _won_ , in a way. You’re free to come and go as you please. And you’ve certainly earned your place in this wonderful new world we’ve all created together.”

No, that’s- that’s not quite right, Jon thinks. To _create_ implies a blank slate on which to spin a thought, an idea from nothing to everything, to build layers and layers atop an infinitesimally small point until a thing has grown that’s wild and free and a product of yourself all the same. This world is not that. It did not begin from nothing. It began from something as old as time, perhaps older. It grew and spread from the cracks in reality, through which fear bled and infected all those it touched. It grounded itself in a connection, built of shining silver thread and attached to fourteen mirrored pinprick points on two bodies that are now inextricably bound to the world’s very core. Jon can feel each thread thrum in time with his heartbeat as he slips the knife free, the shine of silver winking once in the sickly red light of the Panopticon before he presses the blade against his throat, where it nestles against another mark, made so long ago, perhaps the deepest of the ones that mar his soul.

He doesn’t want to die. He so, so badly wants to live. To see the world be born anew and begin to regrow. To visit the cows with Martin, and to wake to the smell of freshly brewed tea and buttered toast. To watch months turn into years turn into decades, and to see the grey in Martin’s hair begin to match his in intensity, and to let love and peace consume him. But he lost that chance the moment he picked up Jonah’s statement. Everything since has just been borrowed time.

At least it had been lovely, for a while. At least he has the memory of bliss.

Jonah’s mouth is twisted in a smirk as he says, “Oh, come now, Jon, you’re not really going to—”

And Martin’s eyes are wide and frantic and desperate as he says, “Jon, what- what are you doing? Wait, _don’t_ —!”

And Jon feels hot tears run down his cheeks as he says, voice breaking, “Martin, I love you. And I’m so, so sorry.”

It hurts a lot less than Jon had thought it would. Completing that aborted motion from so long ago. There’s a clatter from somewhere in front of him, and then there are hands cupping his face, hands pressing down tightly on the deep gash in his throat as it weeps sticky crimson, hands pulling Jon into a tight, desperate embrace as the flood of red becomes too much to contain.

“Jon, no.” It comes through a fog, a darkness that creeps in on light feet. “Jon, _please._ Please don’t leave me. I- this isn’t _fair,_ this wasn’t- this wasn’t supposed to—”

A sob, ripped free from an unwilling throat.

“I love you. I love you, Jon, I _can’t_ lose you. I _can’t—_ ”

* * *

“—do this without you. I don’t _want_ to—”

Another sob tumbles free, and Martin can’t look at his eyes, because if he _looks_ , then he’ll see the dull hazel staring back at nothing, milky and unseeing and unseen. And he can’t- he just _can’t._ God, everything had happened so fast. It’s not _fair._

Jon had just—

And Martin hadn’t even gotten the chance to say goodbye.

Jonah had crumpled, like a marionette with its strings cut, in tandem with Jon. Martin had thought, all the times that he’d imagined Jonah’s death, either by his own hand or by someone else’s or simply by some stroke of blind luck, that he’d feel relieved. Happy. Elated, even. Now, he just feels like a hand has reached through his chest and pulled out everything it could get ahold of.

Martin holds Jon tightly to him and lets his body shake with sobs, even as the red light begins to pulse erratically around them, and the stone walls of the Panopticon begin to crumble, and the strings that had held this world together begin to unravel and snap, taking the fear along with them. He holds him as the dust clears, after what might be hours or might be weeks, and the faintest glimmer of sunlight begins to peak between the clouds of grey soot that cover the sky, illuminating patches of green grass poking through broken concrete slabs. He holds him as people, shaking and grieving and broken but not scared—never again scared—begin to stagger out under the open sky, no longer wide and unblinking.

A pair of gentle hands fold around his, and a soft voice that calls itself Georgie murmurs an apology and an instruction, to _come on, Martin. It’s… it’s time_. He thinks her hands will come away sticky, but it’s been too long; the blood has dried, and the light has died, and Jon’s so _cold._

Martin thinks, distantly, that Jon’s always had terrible circulation. When he gets the time, he… he should make him a sweater, and they can curl up by the fire with blankets wrapped around their shoulders and mugs of hot chocolate clutched between their hands, and maybe they’ll get a cat.

Jon’s so _cold_. Martin holds him tighter, and tries desperately not to feel at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow these really do just get sadder by the day huh...


	11. iron and wine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No.10 prompt: _blood loss_
> 
> cw: graphic blood/gore, body horror, unreality

_“Are you sure, Archivist?” Helen’s smile is jagged and sharp, and it stretches just a bit too far beyond the confines of her face. “Nothing in this new world is without consequence. I would be **very** careful, if I were you, to remember that.”_

_“Thanks,” Jon says, with a tightness in his voice that says he’s anything but thankful. “I’ll keep it in mind. Now can you help us or not?”_

_“Of course. I’ve always been helpful, haven’t I, Martin?”_

_Martin looks like he’d rather be anywhere but here. “Um, well, I- I **suppose** so, but—”_

_“Fantastic!” Helen claps her hands together, and the sound they make is outside the realm of human description but still manages to send a chill down Jon’s spine. “Then let’s get to it, I suppose!”_

_A yellow door swings open, and beyond it lies nothing but black. Jon gets the distinct impression that it’s waiting. Hungry._

_“After you,” Helen says with an inviting gesture, and after a moment’s pause where Jon swears the whole world holds its breath, he steps past her and over the threshold._

* * *

The sky is melting, and Martin _can’t open the door._

“Helen!” Martin’s fists bang an incessant rhythm on bright yellow wood. “Jon! This- this is _bad,_ this isn’t- you have to come back, like- like _right now!_ ”

Something hot and sticky drips onto Martin’s shoulder, and when he moves to wipe it off, his hand comes away red. “Oh, god,” Martin says, and he doesn’t even try to get the blood off his hand before he resumes the knocking, leaving red splatters against the cheery, almost mocking yellow that refuses to budge. It takes altogether too long for Martin to notice the red seeping around the doorframe, running to the ground in rivulets and joining the droplets that fall from the sky like bloody tears—if there were still eyes to cry them, that is. No, those had liquified as Martin stood, waiting, for Jon to emerge from hallways that twisted and spiraled and corrupted a mind from the inside out.

He should have _known_ that this was a bad idea. That Helen’s quick agreement to let Jon pass through her corridors, in stark contrast to her earlier hesitance, was suspicious at best and actively malicious at worst, and so even if Jon was _sure_ that this was the path they needed to take, they should have at least stopped to _think_ about what exactly the plan was if and when everything went horribly wrong. But… but Jon had never been wrong before. And Martin trusts Jon. So, he hadn’t questioned it when Jon said their path would take them through Helen’s corridors. He hadn’t questioned it when Helen had gripped his shoulder tightly with fingers that seemed to twist through to his very soul and said pleasantly, “Oh, this won’t involve you, Martin. It’s best if you just wait out here. We’ll be back before you know it!”

He hadn’t questioned it when the door had swung shut with a _click_ that sounded a lot less like a door being closed and a lot more like a lock being slid into place.

Then, the first crimson drop had fallen, and the dam had broken, and Martin had begun to knock.

* * *

_The reflections aren’t right, in here. There are mirrors everywhere, and Jon can see himself reflected in every one, refracted into a thousand versions of himself that spiral on and on for eternity, but it’s also… **not** him. He stares at the thing that’s calling itself Jonathan Sims, and it stares back._

_It smiles, and it begins to weep._

_Why… why did he come here, again? These corridors, they lead… somewhere, they lead somewhere. They lead to **someone** , someone Jon needs. But being in here, it’s like- it’s like static filtering through every one of his senses, and he’s blind, in all ways but in sight. _

_The walls smile, and they begin to weep._

_“Are you lost, Archivist?”_

_It echoes through his mind in painful shards of gleeful laughter, and Jon falls to his knees, clutching at his temples like that’ll somehow alleviate the tension he can feel building behind his eyes, aching to be released. “Please,” he begs, not sure what he’s asking for but feeling the words push free from his throat regardless. “Please, you said- you said you would help.”_

_“And I am!” Giggles bounce off the walls, and Jon groans with each echo. “We’ve had this conversation before, Archivist. Knowledge is not the same as understanding, and complication is not falsehood. I cannot survive your presence here, perhaps. But I’ve found an alternate solution, as you know, or you wouldn’t have knocked on my door in the first place. Now, the question is this: can **you** survive **me**? You may not know the answer to that, but I am quite certain you will understand it.”_

_A long, slim finger rests beneath his chin and lifts his head, and the shifting, formless thing in front of him that is and isn’t Helen Richardson does its best approximation of a smile. And Jon begins to weep._

_It’s only as ~~Helen~~ begins to laugh in circles, and the halls begin to fold in on themselves, and mirrors bend and twist and shatter around him in a dancing maelstrom of things that could be the Archivist, that he sees the dark red rivulets running down his cheeks. And then hands reach through the mirrors, jagged finger bones grasping for purchase against the sharpening angles of his face, and he sees nothing at all._

* * *

The sky is melting, and so are Jon’s eyes.

Martin thinks he might have screamed, when Helen’s door had swung open in a smooth, practiced motion and Jon had fallen out, caught just shy of the ground by a crooked, impossibly long finger that cut neatly through the skin and muscle of Jon’s wrist and held him suspended by a single, bleeding hand. “He’s all yours,” she’d said, and she’d let him slip the rest of the way to the ground before folding back into herself, and Jon must have been unconscious, because though he crumpled to the ground in the cold, lifeless way of a ragdoll, his heart must still have been pumping, because his eyes—

Martin turned, and was promptly sick.

“Jon. Jon! _Please_ wake up,” Martin says now, desperately, as he cradles Jon’s face between hands made slick with blood and tries unsuccessfully to keep the hot tears that are cascading down his face at bay. “I- I’m sorry, I should have- I should have _followed_ you, no matter what Helen said, I shouldn’t have let you go alone, I should have—”

Jon’s ragged gasp of air, like a drowning man breaking the surface of the water, cuts through Martin’s apologies like a knife, and his raspy, “Martin?” immediately turns into coughing as red runs past his lips and he chokes on it.

“ _Jon!_ Oh, thank god. I- I’ll just- _fuck._ ” Martin looks at his hands, then at the sky, then at his shirt— _anywhere_ _but the eyes, just look anywhere but the eyes—_ and quickly tears a long strip from the bottom of it that still looks vaguely clean. There’s so much blood, more than Martin can ever hope to wipe away, but he does what he can.

“Martin,” Jon says again, raspier than the first time. “What- what’s happening?”

“It’s—”

Martin hesitates. He doesn’t know what to say. What _can_ he say? That everything’s falling apart? That the sky has dissolved into crimson red that now rains down upon the earth below, and that Jon has dissolved in kind? That he should have helped, that he should have questioned it, but he didn’t, and the price he’s agreed to pay is higher than he ever could have known?

Martin clamps his mouth shut and begins rifling through his backpack for the bandages he knows are stashed deep within it. “It’s going to be okay,” he says finally, when the silence has stretched on far too long to be accidental. “You’re- you’re going to be okay.”

“Martin.” Jon’s voice cracks. “Why can’t I see?”

A spot of red blossoms on the white of the bandage, a drop of blood from a sky that’s liquifying before their very eyes, and Martin breaks.

“It’s blood,” Martin says, and his voice is too high, too loud, but he can’t seem to stop the words from tumbling out like dominos. “The sky is melting, Jon, and- and everything’s gone wrong, somehow, and it’s just- it’s just _red_ everywhere. I tried, to get in, to- to _help_ , but the door wouldn’t open—I tried _so hard,_ but the door wouldn’t open, Jon, and you—”

Martin stifles a sob with a fist pressed to his mouth. “Jon, you- your eyes, they’re—”

“—a consequence,” Jon says distantly, in a voice that sounds just outside himself. “I asked to see inside, to- to see the solution, and this is the price to pay.” His laughter spirals upward, into the dripping sky, and it’s so _wrong_ that Martin’s almost sick again. “No, that’s- that’s not quite it.” His hands reach up, almost of their own accord, and brush against empty sockets that still, even now, weep a runny mix of blood and sclera and nerve endings that are still raw to the touch. “This _is_ the solution. And I’m the price to pay.”

Quietly, Martin says, “I… I don’t understand.”

Jon laughs again—just once. “I do. I really, _really_ wish I didn’t. But I do.”

He doesn’t elaborate, and Martin doesn’t ask. Martin carefully wraps the things that had once been Jon’s eyes in bandages, and more carefully still wraps the thing that had once been the Archivist in his arms, and holds him until the sky bleeds its final crimson drops.


	12. ashes to ashes, dust to dust

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No.11 prompt: _struggling, crying_
> 
> cw: implied martyrdom/suicide

The Panopticon is crumbling, but Martin can barely see it through the tears.

“Let me _go!_ ” he says desperately, fighting unsuccessfully against the hands that keep him from rushing forward into the cascading stones. “It’s- it’s not too late, there’s still- there’s still _time—_ ”

“ _Martin_ ,” Basira says, her hands gripping his right arm like a vice. “You can’t go back in there. You won’t make it out a second time.”

Something raw and sharp rips through his chest. “I don’t _care!_ ” He struggles harder, but the hands just tighten their grip. “I- I can’t just _leave_ him! He- he was supposed to be behind me!” He chokes on a sob. “I thought… I thought he was behind me.”

“Martin, I’m _sorry_ ,” Georgie says from his left side, and her voice is almost tight and controlled enough not to hear the grief in it. “But Basira’s right. There’s hardly a _door_ anymore, you won’t be able to—”

“I. Don’t. _Care._ ”

He pulls harder, desperate, and Basira swears as he almost breaks free. “Martin, just- just _stop_ , okay? He’s gone! Jon knew practically everything—do you think he didn’t know this might happen? He _knew_ , and he went in there anyway. He made his choice, and I _don’t_ think you dying too was a part of it! So I am _sorry_ , but there’s no _fucking_ way we’re letting you run back into a collapsing building!”

“You don’t _get_ it—”

“Oh, I’m sorry, _I_ don’t get it? I had to shoot my partner, Martin. The one person I had left who cared about me, the one person who was with me through _everything_ , who I could trust when everything else went to hell. So don’t try to say that I don’t understand _loss._ ”

“No,” Martin says tightly, his cheeks sticky and wet with tears. “You don’t _get_ it. I _left_ him, Basira. Something _happened_ up there, and Elias wasn’t- he wasn’t _Elias_ , or Jonah, he was- god, he was something _else_ , and things started to go wrong—really, really wrong. And then Jon, he- he told me that we needed you, Basira, that we needed someone aligned with both the Hunt and the Eye. Everything was falling apart, and he said that- that you could _fix_ it, and he promised that he was behind me, that he just had to do one last thing, and I- I _believed_ him, because why would he lie? Why… why would he send me away?”

Martin can hardly speak around the tears that stream down his cheeks, chasing tracks in the dust that’s collecting on them as the Panopticon continues to break apart. His voice is barely more than a choked whisper when he says, “He- he knew? That this was how it was going to end? He _knew_ , and he- he just—”

His voice cuts out with a gasping sob, and he doubles over as breathing suddenly becomes a monumental task, his gasps barely enough to overcome the heavy weight on his chest. The hands that had been gripping his shoulders to the point of bruising shift to something that might be soothing, that’s probably _meant_ to be soothing, if Martin were still able to feel comfort.

“I’m sorry,” Georgie says, and Martin doesn’t have to look to know that she’s crying too. Her arms wrap around Martin in a tentative, yet firm, hug, and he barely hesitates before folding into her, tucking his head into the crook of her neck even though he knows the tears are going to soak right through the fabric of her jacket and that his face probably feels uncomfortably wet as it makes contact with her skin. But she doesn’t say anything about it. She just sighs heavily and repeats, softer, “I’m sorry.”

Martin doesn’t want her apology. He doesn’t want Basira’s curt, “We should get going. It’s… it’s not safe here anymore. And there’s really nothing else to be done. It’s… it’s just rubble now. And of _course_ nothing’s fucking changed. Because we can’t be that lucky.” He doesn’t want Melanie’s forced kindness in the way she says, “Do… do you want to carry the Admiral? He’s, um. He’s therapeutic, in a way. We got him registered as an emotional support animal after I, um. Quit the Institute. And Jon really liked him. You know, he was actually the one who named… Christ that’s not making it any better, is it? Oh, _fuck_ , I- I made it worse, didn’t I?”

He wants Jon. But this isn’t a world where he gets what he wants. Not anymore.

Martin cries, and cries, and cries, until he’s left hollow and numb. They leave the Panopticon behind, reduced to rubble, and Martin’s last shreds of hope are left buried beneath broken stone.


	13. slipknot

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No.12 prompt: _broken bones_
> 
> cw: graphic depiction of injury, gun violence

“I am not a violent man,” Jonah says pleasantly as he increases the pressure he’s placing on Martin’s wrist just enough that the _crack_ of snapping bones echoes off the stone walls surrounding them. Over Martin’s cry of pain, he continues, “However, I don’t like being _threatened._ You understand, don’t you, Jon?”

In a voice calm and controlled and just on the edge of breaking, Jon says, “Let him go.”

“Why don’t _you_ ,” Jonah says, with another sharp motion of his hand that has Martin sobbing, “put down the knife you’re currently holding over my heart. It may not strictly be my body anymore, but I’m still rather attached to it.”

“Jon, _don’t—_ ”

Martin cuts off with a choked scream as Jonah _twists_ , and Jon tries very, very hard to fight against the Knowledge that Martin’s bone is now dangerously close to breaking through the skin of his wrist. “You,” Jonah hisses, the knife held in his free hand pressing more firmly underneath Martin’s chin, “are more trouble than you’re worth.”

Jon’s voice is significantly _less_ calm and controlled as he says, “Okay! Just- just stop.” He hesitates, only for a moment, before pulling back from the lifeless, eyeless corpse that had once been Jonah Magnus whose heart still inextricably beats. “Now _let him go._ ”

Jonah smiles thinly. “And drop the knife as well. If you would.”

Jon glances at Martin, who shakes his head, almost imperceptibly.

He drops the knife.

“ _Good_ , Jon. Was that so hard?” Jonah says with a hint of humor that makes Jon’s stomach turn.

In a low, dangerous tone, Jon says, “Let. Him. _Go._ I’ve done what you asked.”

“It didn’t have to be like this, you know,” Jonah says, like Jon hadn’t even spoken. “You have _so much power_ here, Jon, in this world we’ve created. And Martin… well, you can keep him safe, can’t you? You can do _so many_ things here. Get _revenge._ Get _even._ Use our patron to settle some old scores. Oh, don’t look _quite_ so surprised—there isn’t anything in this world that I can’t see. Forgive me for… _checking up_ every now and again.”

There are tears streaming down Martin’s face; Jon can’t stop looking at them, the knot in his throat growing tighter by the second. “I _did what you asked_ —”

“As you always have,” Jonah says mildly; the point of the knife digs just a bit deeper into Martin’s throat. “Though perhaps not always to your knowledge. But the _freedom_ you have now, Jon! The _power_! You can’t tell me that you’re not _enjoying_ yourself, being able to walk freely in this world.”

Quietly, horrified, Jon says, “You’re not going to let him go.”

“I’m afraid that I don’t appreciate being _manipulated_ a second time,” Jonah says tightly, all previous levity gone in an instant. “I’ve worked too hard to get to this moment for it to be ruined by any… _loose variables_. You should have considered that before you sought out my old body. Though you were never one for _planning,_ were you?”

“You’re not…” Jon stares, desperately, at Martin, and it feels like the ground is crumbling under his feet. “You- you said you would—”

“Did I?” Jonah smiles humorlessly, and his eyes are focused on Jon—only on Jon. “Or did you just _assume_ I did? _Really_ , Jon, I would have thought by know you would have—”

A gunshot cracks through the air like a bolt of lightning, and everything turns upside down.

Jonah staggers back, the red blossoming on the left side of his chest mirroring the growing stain on the body on the ground from where the bullet had pierced a still-beating heart. The knife falls away from Martin’s throat, and the instant it leaves his skin, Martin’s gone, stumbling toward Jon with his arm hanging limply at his side. Jon’s hands immediately go to Martin’s face, then his neck, where a thin line of blood drips down from a mark that Jon knows, from experience, is going to scar.

Basira steps out of the shadows, gun in hand, and says, “Good thing it wasn’t _Jon_ making the plan, then.”

“Do you- do you _know what you’ve done_?” Jonah gasps, his face a sickly white. “What- what do you think this is going to—”

He falls to his knees, hand stained crimson where it desperately clutches at his chest, and as Jon stares into his eyes, he thinks this might be the first time he’s seen Jonah truly _scared_. “This isn’t…” Jonah says, barely more than a whisper. When his eyes turn glassy and he crumples, finally, to the floor, Jon knows he should feel relieved. Ecstatic, even.

He just feels sick.

A whimper escapes Martin, and Jon’s mind immediately snaps back to the present, to the unnatural angle of Martin’s wrist, to his slowly purpling skin. “Oh, Christ,” Jon says, and he reaches for Martin’s hand on instinct, stopping halfway when Martin shakes his head quickly, desperately. “I- I didn’t think he’d be able to- I- I should have _Known_ that he’d be able to hurt you, I just—”

“Jon,” Martin interrupts, in a voice tight with pain. “It- it’s not your fault.”

Quietly, Jon says, “Isn’t it?”

“What? No, of course not! Why would—?”

“We should set that,” Basira says, and Jon’s not sure if the hard line of her mouth as she kneels down next to them is from the dead body lying less than three feet away or the conversation she’d interrupted. Maybe both. “Martin, you might want to hold onto something. _With your non-broken hand!_ Christ, how did you survive for so long without me around?”

Martin grips Jon’s hand tightly, whimpering softly as Basira begins to set his wrist. “No, a- a little to the left,” Jon says at one point, when Basira doesn’t quite line the bones back together correctly, and he earns a glare for his trouble, but Basira makes the adjustment. “I’m sorry, Martin,” he says at another, when Basira begins the painstaking process of twisting Martin’s wrist back into place and Martin can’t help the sob that rips free from his throat. He squeezes Martin’s hand tighter, pressing a kiss to his knuckles, then gently to his temple. “I love you, so much.”

Martin tries to smile back, but it’s swallowed by a groan of pain as Basira begins to wrap his wrist in makeshift splints and white bandages. Jon appreciates the gesture just the same. “I love you too.”

“Done,” Basira announces, stiff and clinical in that way she gets when _I love you_ s are exchanged. She pauses, and then says haltingly, “I… I’m sorry as well, Martin. Using you as bait, that was bad enough, but… _Christ_ , I really didn’t think he was going to—”

She pinches her nose tightly. “At least,” she says tightly, “he’s gone. And we’re all fine.”

Jon tries not to Know that the people above them are still trapped, pinned under the weight of a thousand eyes. He tries not to Know that Annabelle Cane has left Upton House and is following the trail they’ve left—following them to the Panopticon. He tries not to Know that the world is still exactly as it was, and nothing’s really changed at all.

It comes to him anyway.

“Yeah,” Jon says, and he squeezes Martin’s hand tighter. “Yeah, we- we’re fine.”

He just wishes it didn’t feel so much like a lie.


	14. chimera

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No.13 (alternate) prompt: _memory loss_
> 
> cw: major character death, mentioned eye trauma, physical and mental deterioration

_Warm sunlight filters through the window, casting dancing shadows against the hardwood floors of the Scottish safehouse. It brings out the golden tones in Martin’s hair, Jon thinks as he lays tangled in the soft down comforter they’d dragged from the closet, sleep having left him before the sun broke over the horizon, as it so often did lately._

_“I can feel you watching,” Martin says softly, eyes still closed, and Jon startles slightly, feeling a blush rise to his cheeks._

_“I- sorry, I… thought you were still asleep. Though I suppose that’s not really any better, is it?”_

_“No, it’s- it’s fine,” Martin says, opening his eyes to look at Jon. There’s a small smile on his lips. “It… it’s nice, actually.”_

_Jon’s blush deepens. “Oh.”_

_Martin laughs lightly, voice still husky from sleep, and reaches forward, his fingers ghosting across Jon’s cheek. “I just meant that- well, you don’t have to stop. That’s all. I like looking at you too, you know.”_

_Jon reaches up and captures Martin’s fingers with his own. It never feels quite real, being able to touch Martin like this; even now, Jon’s afraid that one moment, he’ll reach out and he’ll meet only fog. “I know.” He hesitates, just for a second, and then leans forward and presses a soft kiss against Martin’s mouth. “I love you.”_

_He can feel Martin smile against his lips. “I love you too, Jon.”_

_They lie there,_ _in the warmth_

_of the sun_ _,_

_and just_

_look…_

* * *

It’s really no surprise when Martin wakes one morning to the creaking of the bed as Jon scrambles out of it, nearly tripping in his effort to free himself from the tangle of sheets that, once, had been a comfort. It still nearly breaks Martin when Jon says, in a voice trembling with raw fear, “Where- where am I? Who are you? Why- why can’t I see anything?”

They’d rehearsed this, all those weeks ago when the first gaps in Jon’s memory had begun to appear. Just little things, at first: what he’d had for breakfast that morning; their trip to the village the day before, to pick up groceries; the garden they’d planted last week, evident only in the freshly tilled earth and small wooden markers labeled in sharp, blocky letters that Jon couldn’t remember writing. Then, bigger things: those last moments of fear, destroyed utterly as the Panopticon went up in flames and Jon’s eyes alit in kind; that long and pained journey through the domains, every step carefully planned yet entirely unknown, in the end; the trip to the safehouse, Martin still shivering in the passenger seat of Basira’s car and Jon’s hand clasped firmly with his, as it had been since they’d begun to make their way out of the fog.

Yesterday, it had been the first time Martin had brought Jon tea. Earl Grey, with a splash of milk, no sugar. Set on his desk with a tentative smile and a, “Sorry about earlier, with the- erm, the dog. I- I’m glad to be here. Really.”

Jon had stared at the tea, like he couldn’t quite understand why it was there, and then had said stiffly, “I trust we can expect a more _professional_ demeanor when it comes to your work, Mr. Blackwood.”

“Oh, y- yes, of course,” Martin said, trying and failing to hide the nervousness in his voice with a shaky smile. “And it’s Martin. Please.”

Jon’s finger absentmindedly traced the rim of the steaming mug. “Well, _Martin,_ we’ll have our work cut out for us rectifying the frankly _abysmal_ state of the Archives. I suggest you spend less time making tea and more time filing.”

It probably should have made Martin angrier, to have what was intended as an apology be brushed aside. But the look on Jon’s face later, after Martin had retreated back to the assistants’ desks, when he took a casual sip of the tea and, apparently, found it quite to his liking, was something Martin never could get out of his mind.

And now it was gone. And Martin knew, when Jon looked at him blankly and said, “We’ve just met—of course I don’t know how you take your tea,” that this was it. He… he’d run out of time.

He’d known for weeks, what was coming. It doesn’t make it hurt any less.

* * *

Jon’s curled up under the sheets, and he’s shivering, and Martin wants nothing more than to wrap him up in his arms and hold him, in these last moments. But he knows that’s not what Jon wants. Not anymore. So he sits, in the armchair he’d moved from the living room to their bedroom— _Jon’s_ bedroom, he mentally corrects, as he’d moved to the second bedroom in the safehouse some time ago—and tries, unsuccessfully, not to cry as Jon says, weakly, “I- I don’t remember. You- your name. I’m sorry, I- I think you told me, but I- I don’t…”

Jon lets out a small, broken whimper. “I don’t remember who I am. And- and everything _hurts_ , and it- it’s so cold. Why… what’s happening to me?”

God, he can’t do this. He- he shouldn’t _have_ to do this. Everyone else gets to be happy. Everyone else gets to forget that dark and broken world of fear and pain, resuming their lives like nothing had ever changed. They’d gone through _so much,_ sacrificed _so much_ to cast the fears from this reality, and this is what they get. This is their reward. Martin wants to scream. He wants to break down, to collapse into the pain and the fear and the sorrow, to retreat into himself and shut out a world that’s not for him anymore.

He forces a reassuring smile onto his face. “It’s- it’s okay, Jon. You’re going to be okay.”

Jon’s hands, thin enough to be nothing but bone covered in a layer of dry, cracked skin, scrabble at the sheets, unable to get a grip. “I- I don’t- _please,_ just- just _help_ me, I don’t- I don’t _understand_ \- who am I? Why can’t I _remember?_ Why can’t I _see?_ ”

“You… you’re going to be okay,” Martin repeats, and he- he can’t stop himself. He reaches forward, hesitantly, and lays a careful hand on top of Jon’s. Jon flinches instinctively, and Martin’s stomach twists as he begins to move his hand back. Then, tentatively, Jon relaxes against Martin’s touch.

“You…” Jon swallows, and his voice is so _ragged._ “You’re so _warm._ ” A pause. Then: “Will… will you hold me? I- I’m sorry, I- I don’t even know if you _know_ me, but- but I’m just so cold, and—”

Jon’s voice breaks off, and Martin realizes that he’s crying. “And I think I’m dying,” he says, barely more than a whisper, and it breaks Martin’s heart into a thousand tiny shards.

“Of course,” Martin says, and he’s sure that the tears that are now flowing freely down his face are wet and sticky against Jon’s neck as he pulls Jon tightly to him, trying desperately to commit to memory the way that Jon smells, even now, like lavender and sandalwood, and the way that Jon’s curls tickle his cheeks as Jon tucks his head into the crook of Martin’s neck, and the way that Jon sighs, ever so slightly, as his arms wrap around Martin’s back and his hands fist in the soft material of Martin’s shirt. Martin can hardly breathe, but he focuses on those sensations and tells himself the lie that this isn’t the last time, because otherwise he thinks he’ll crumble entirely. “Of course,” he repeats. Then, because he can’t help himself: “I love you, Jon. So, so much. I- I just wanted you to know.”

Jon’s breathing hitches, and Martin thinks he’s going to pull away—that it was too much, he knows it was too much, that he shouldn’t have said it—but after a moment, he just squeezes Martin tighter. “I- I wish I could say the same. But I… I don’t think I know what love feels like anymore. It… it’s just _gone._ ” Jon swallows, and then says, in a quiet and pleading voice, “Could… could you describe it to me?”

Martin tries to think of a way—a way to describe how it feels, to be completely consumed with affection and warmth and radiance and _Jon_ —and comes up empty. So he pulls back, just enough to study the lines of Jon’s face, and begins to tell him about cups of tea placed on hardwood desks, and quiet moments spent walking with hands clasped through rolling, grassy hills, and holding onto one another unwaveringly when the world wanted nothing more than to pull them apart.

At some point, Martin feels the gentle rise and fall of Jon’s chest still. But he keeps talking, even as he lays Jon down gently on the bed, and brushes Jon’s hair away from his face, and presses a soft kiss to his forehead.

“It was nice, you know?” Martin says, his voice thick with tears but unable to help the small, sad smile that comes across his face. “The time we had. I just wish…”

No. There’s really no point anymore, is there?

Martin steps away from the bed, and looks away. “Goodbye, Jon,” he says. He lets himself stand there, just a moment more. Then, he draws in a shaking breath, and makes the call.


	15. i shall come out gold

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No.14 prompt: _fire_
> 
> cw: burning/burned alive
> 
> this one has fluff i promise....

The Archives smell of dust and old paper, and of acrid smoke as the first pages catch alight.

“Are you _sure_ about this, Jon?” Martin had asked as they stood outside what had once been the Institute and had once been the Panopticon, merged into something Jon just cryptically called _my domain._ “I- I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m all for burning some statements—Christ knows it was cathartic the last time—but you- you said you don’t know what it’ll _do._ ”

“I imagine,” Jon said, his eyes fixed on the towering structure before them, “that it’ll do precisely what it did the last time: distract El- _Jonah._ ”

“But you don’t _know_ ,” Martin pressed. “You see why that scares me, right? The last time you _didn’t know_ something, we almost _died_!”

The last time had been Melanie and Georgie and corridors that stretched out for what could have been meters or could have been miles, and it had taken a price far too high for either of their comforts to survive. Martin wasn’t particularly keen to do it again.

“This- this isn’t _like_ last time,” Jon insisted, and his eyes moved away from the tower to meet Martin’s. There was a hard determination in them, fostered over what might have been months of traveling through domains of fear and slowly losing everything they held dear. But Martin could still see the fear and uncertainty that lay beneath, because he _knew_ Jon. He also knew there was nothing he could say to change Jon’s mind, not this time. “This place, it- it’s a _part_ of me, Martin. I can’t know what’s inside myself. You just have to- to trust that I know what I’m doing. What I’m _risking._ ”

Softly, Martin said, “I _do_ trust you Jon. I just—I worry, that’s all. We’ve come so far, I don’t want to- to _lose_ you.”

Jon reached forward and placed a gentle hand against Martin’s cheek. “I know. And you won’t. I promise.”

Martin laughed, but the humor wasn’t there. “I’m holding you to that.”

And then Jon handed him the lighter, the gold glinting faintly in the dreary grey light that this world was perpetually bathed in. He pressed a soft, almost hesitant kiss to Martin’s mouth, in a way that felt less like a promise and more like a wish, and said, “I’ll see you later, okay? When it’s over. I… I love you.”

And then he was gone, making his way up the stone stairs to whatever lay at the top of the tower, and Martin headed down. To the Archives.

They really haven’t changed at all, Martin thinks as he sets another yellowing page ablaze. The teetering shelves are all still there, overburdened with disorganized boxes of files and crammed too-close in the darkly lit space of document storage. Jon’s office door is hanging slightly ajar, and Martin hadn’t been able to resist looking in, at the desk covered in loose papers and empty coffee mugs and sticky notes of all different colors and sizes. The rib and the jar of ashes were still in his desk drawers. Martin doesn’t know why he tucked them in his backpack, next to the bandages and tea that isn’t tea anymore. He supposes he just doesn’t want Jon to have to lose any other parts of himself.

It’s almost too easy, to allow the flames to consume the entire room in a red-hot blaze that hurts Martin’s eyes as he stares in, watching paper after paper wither and crumble. He swears he can hear them scream as they disintegrate, just once as their stories are lost to the raw desolation of the fire. But then it’s quiet but for the crackle and pop of thousands of stories of fear being consumed as one.

He was right; it does feel cathartic, in a way. But he can’t help but watch the Archives burn, that place where he spent so many years as a prisoner and a tool and a watched man, and feel that it’s not right, somehow. That _he_ doesn’t feel right, somehow. There’s something… _off._ He noticed it when first walking down the stairs, flicking the light switch and watching the faint bulbs that lined the hallways flicker on. He notices it now, standing just at the base of the stairs, feeling the intense heat radiating from the rooms around him. It’s not until he finally retreats up the stairs and emerges from the Archives that it _clicks._

An Eye cannot see inside itself. And in the Archives, he was not watched.

_“This place, it- it’s a **part** of me, Martin.”_

“ _Jon,_ ” Martin says, terror rising sticky and hot in his throat. He drops the lighter. And begins to run.

* * *

The Panopticon smells of blood and limestone, and of burnt flesh.

Somewhere above, someone is screaming.

Martin runs faster, tears beginning to stream down his cheeks, and hopes he isn’t too late.

* * *

“What,” Jonah Magnus says tightly, “have you _done?_ ”

The first thing Martin registers is that Jonah is still alive, and white-hot anger surges through him. He opens his mouth—to say what, exactly, he’s not entirely sure. Perhaps just to call Jonah all the increasingly derogatory names he’d come up for him on their journey here.

Then, he remembers the terror, the running, and the smell of burning. And he looks down.

“Oh, god,” he says, and falls to his knees. “Oh, god, Jon, no, no, no.” He reaches out, as if to touch the blistering skin before him, blackened and charred in places, and pulls his hand back at the last moment when the heat still radiating off Jon hits his palm full-force. “Oh _Christ_ , what have I done?” he whispers, clamping a hand over his mouth in a desperate attempt to contain his shaking sobs.

“ _Martin,_ ” Jonah says, more forcefully. “What. Have. You. _Done?_ ”

“I… I burned it,” Martin says in a small, shaking voice. “The Archives, they’re- they’re gone.” Martin stares at Jon’s face, at the singed-away eyebrows and cracked and bloody lips. Quietly, horrified, he says, “I burned _him._ ”

“You _what?_ ” In an instant, there’s a hand, tight on Martin’s upper arm and firmly yanking him off the ground. When Martin looks at Jonah, his eyes are alight with a fury that makes a sudden fear thrum through Martin. “Do you know what you’ve _done?_ ” he hisses, squeezing Martin’s arm to the point of pain and beyond, and Martin can’t help the small whimper that escapes him. “You have _doomed us all,_ you _foolish, idiotic—"_

From the ground, there comes a weak cough, and Jonah’s words grind to a halt. Martin doesn’t waste any time; he _pulls_ , and perhaps it’s the surprise that loosens Jonah’s grip, but then Martin’s slipping free and kneeling on the ground next to Jon again, watching the slight rise and fall of his chest where before there had been none.

“Jon?” Martin says, a bit desperately.

There’s a pause that, to Martin, feels like an eternity. Then, Jon opens his eyes.

Martin remembers, with vivid clarity, the moment he’d returned to the safehouse with the world crumbling into pain and terror around him to find Jon crumpled on the floor, surrounded by blank pages and covered head to toe with spiraling words, inked over every inch of skin Martin could see. He remembers even more vividly the moment that Jon had opened his eyes, and how Martin had seen himself reflected in the shining silver-green mirrors they had become, and how his terror had been reflected in kind and tenfold in magnitude.

He’d looked away, and hadn’t looked back for a long while after that.

“Martin?” Jon says, in a voice made raw and cracked by the heat of a thousand open flames running through his veins, and his eyes are a soft brown that makes Martin laugh, a jerky, hiccupping noise that probably sounds more than a bit unhinged but is raw with relief _._

“ _Jon,_ ” Martin says, and the smile he offers Jon is the most genuine he’s given in a long, long time.

“No,” Jonah says, in a voice that’s just to the left of controlled. When Martin glances up, Jonah’s standing over them, eyes ablaze with equal parts fury and terror. “Don’t you _understand?_ If there aren’t any _Archives_ , then there isn’t an _Archivist,_ and if there isn’t an _Archivist_ , then this world, this- this _balance_ of fear, it’s unsustainable. You’ve removed the linchpin, and there is _nothing_ left to hold this reality together. You have _doomed us all._ ”

In a raspy voice that still manages to sound disdainful, Jon says, “We were all already doomed. _You_ saw to that.”

“ _We_ were _powerful_ ,” Jonah snaps, the last vestiges of feigned kindness and austerity gone. “We were _free._ And now we are nothing. This _reality_ is nothing. It will fold, and bend, and break, all because of _you._ ”

“No,” Martin says. “The world will be _saved_ because of us.”

Jonah’s eyes grow impossibly harder. “Is that so? Then I suppose it really has no more use for you, does it?”

His eyes begin to glow, a sickly purple that cuts through Martin to his very soul, and it occurs to Martin that here, now, with the Archivist burned out of Jon and Martin on his knees, Jonah holds all the cards.

And Martin holds a shining gold lighter, still clutched in his right hand.

Paper burns well, Martin thinks absently. And while Jon may have been the Archives, filled to the brim with the fear of others, Jonah is a catalogue of his own, of sights and sounds and everything that has ever been known. The flame licks against Jonah’s ankle, and eagerly swallows him whole.

* * *

The safehouse smells of sawdust and pine needles, and of the soft charring of logs on the fire.

Martin recalls the words, spoken long ago by a face lost to time and terror, that knowledge is not the same as understanding. He rewraps one of the bandages on Jon’s arm, bright white covering the rough texture of healing skin beneath, and finds he cannot disagree.

Knowledge, as told by Jonah Magnus: the world as it was could not survive without the Archive that brought it into existence.

Understanding, as felt by the former Archivist and former Forsaken as they stood outside a crumbling tower and watched the red bleed out of the sky: _this world_ was not the only version of itself that could exist. And reality is more flexible than humanity gives it credit for.

Martin finishes wrapping the last bandage and presses a soft kiss to the inside of Jon’s wrist. “All done.”

Jon takes Martin’s hand in his and kisses it in kind. “Thank you.”

Martin smiles, and presses another kiss to the corner of Jon’s mouth. “Always.”

They sit, curled within each other’s embraces and staring at the fading sunlight trickling in through the window, and enjoy the delicate peace of a world alongside which they have begun to heal.


	16. ascension

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No.15 prompt: _possession_
> 
> cw: implied eye trauma, major character death
> 
> this chapter is loosely based off [this art](https://artmadval.tumblr.com/post/620572029430677504/martin-magnus-jonah-blackwood-anyway-jon-has-a) that sometimes haunts me when I close my eyes at night

When Jon stumbles into the room at the top of Panopticon, heart pounding with equal parts exertion and terror, he sees Martin kneeling over the bloody and broken body of Jonah Magnus and nearly weeps with relief.

“Martin,” he says, voice hoarse from when he’d stood in the twisting halls that the Institute had become and shouted Martin’s name over and over again until it almost lost its meaning. It had been terrifying, to follow Martin around a corner and find that the walls had shifted and warped, turning the hallway into a dead end and sealing Martin away, beyond his reach. It had been even more so to Look, to try to See Martin, and to meet only murky darkness.

But now it’s fine, Jon thinks, as he crosses the room with quick steps hastened by joy and relief to where Martin still kneels on the stone floor, knees stained with crimson blood. Martin’s here, and he’s safe, and Jonah is dead, and it’s fine.

He places a hand on Martin’s shoulder. “Martin?”

Martin turns, and Jon’s heart stops beating.

He’d wondered once, back when the world still belonged to the living and he lay curled up next to Martin in the safehouse, about immortality. Not the truest kind, like Simon Fairchild seemed to embody, but the cruder sort, of Rayner and Jonah, who stole the lives of others to escape that fear of what would inevitably consume them. Would it require forethought, planning, the meticulous choice of a new host, someone who had been touched by the fears and could be stolen in kind? Or was it a clumsy experience of trial and error and stolen physicality, rooted more in the human than in the esoteric? Jon thought of the eyes that stared from every portrait that lined the halls of the Institute, the same pair existing within dozens of bodies, always watching, always planning, and couldn’t help but wonder if it hurt to be replaced.

Jon sees those eyes now, a deep purple that glows in a way not quite human and burning in their intensity, staring at him from a face that is at once achingly familiar and startlingly foreign, and feels a terror so thick it makes him want to retch claw its way up his throat. “Martin?” he repeats, barely a whisper, but even as he says it, he Knows it’s not. Not anymore.

“I’m afraid not,” ~~Martin~~ Jonah says, and hearing that smug, selfish pride that Jonah so often employs in the same voice that has said _I love you_ under the soft glow of morning light makes Jon want to crumble, to drop to his knees and let the sobs that push so insistently at the tip of his tongue overtake him completely. One pushes through anyway, a choked gasp of air that brings with it a wave of agonizing sadness.

“What have you done?” Jon says, in a voice so detached from himself it barely seems his own. “What… what have you _done?_ ”

“What I had to,” Jonah says mildly. He stands, running a casual thumb under his eyes where a thin trickle of blood drips from the corners. It smears red across his face— _Martin’s_ face—and he stares at his now-crimson thumb with some disdain before wiping it deftly on what had once been Martin’s shirt, soft and loved and taken from Upton House, that final utopia that’s nothing but a blank slate in Jon’s mind. “My previous body was… _damaged,_ so I had to act accordingly. Martin really _has_ become quite adept with a knife, hasn’t he?”

“H… has? Is- is he still—?”

“Alive?” Jonah’s lips curl in a smile that might be sympathetic if it weren’t so obviously fake, and if it weren’t so obviously _not Martin_ , because Martin could _never_ smile like that. Like… like it was a carefully calculated lie. A _strategy._ “No. There’s only room for one mind within this body, and, well…” Jonah glances at his hands, turning them over in quiet contemplation. “I _do_ think I’m going to like this one.”

_No. No, no, no, **no.**_

Jon presses a fist to his mouth and stumbles back, nearly tripping over the uneven stones.

_No, no, he can’t be—_

Jon’s back hits the stone wall behind him and he folds, sinking to the ground under the weight of his own crescendoing anguish.

_He **can’t** be gone, he **can’t** be—_

Jon closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to see the man who used to be Martin watch his suffering, with eyes full of a sickening mirth and a face lacking any sort of remorse or sympathy. He closes his eyes, but he can still See.

_He’s dead. Martin’s dead._

“Would it make it easier, I wonder,” Jonah says, his voice cutting through the buzzing in Jon’s ears and the shaking sobs that have completely overcome him, “if I called myself Martin? Of course, there’s no point in subterfuge anymore, but if you would rather—”

“Shut. _Up._ ”

Jonah pauses. Jon’s eyes are tightly closed, but he can still see the corner of Jonah’s mouth turn up, ever so slightly. “Pardon?”

Jon’s face is still streaked with tears, and his arms are still wrapped around himself in a crushing embrace, and his voice is still cracked and broken when he repeats, “ _Shut. Up._ ”

Jonah sighs, and it’s the most _Martin_ sound he’s made, and it ignites something white-hot and ravenous in Jon’s mind. “It didn’t have to be like this, you know,” he says placatingly, like one might speak to a child throwing a tantrum. “I was perfectly willing to allow the two of you to wander this new world of ours for eternity, doing—well, doing whatever you wanted, I suppose. You’d done so _well,_ Jon; it felt only fair. And, after all, this world does belong to _both_ of us.”

“I don’t want it,” Jon says, barely more than a whisper. He opens his eyes, finally, and looks up, allowing himself to be consumed by a deep purple that drowns out everything else around it. “I never wanted it.”

Jonah’s mouth curves down. “Pity.”

He turns, perhaps deciding that he’s done with Jon, but Jon isn’t done with _him._ “I never wanted the world,” Jon says, uncurling his body and pushing himself, shakily, to his feet, despite the trembling in his legs that threatens to send him sprawling again. “I never wanted power, or unlimited knowledge, or even _freedom_ from the horrible places you’ve condemned all of humanity to wallow in.” Jon allows himself, briefly, to study the lines of ~~Jonah’s~~ Martin’s face as he turns back to face Jon: the gentle slope of his nose, turning up slightly at the end; the softness underneath his chin, where Jon had pressed feather-light kisses once and reveled in the way that Martin said, chidingly, “Hey, that tickles!”; the spattering of freckles across cheeks that dimpled when he smiled, spelling out constellations of their own, a night sky more beautiful than the one that lay above. Jon allows himself to feel, one last time, in love with the face he sees before him.

“I only ever wanted Martin,” Jon says, and he tucks the love deep within him, where it won’t be scarred by what’s to come. “And you _took him from me._ ”

Jonah was wrong, Jon thinks, as his eyes flash silver and every eye in the world turns as one to face the body that Jonah had stolen but that is still very much _Martin Blackwood_. This world does not belong to both of them. It might have, in the beginning, when Jon had still resisted, had still been tied to something that wasn’t pure _Knowing_ , in the form of quiet laughter and recited poetry. But not anymore. And as the Eye begins to burn Jonah from the inside out, Jon feels a bit of himself burn as well. But the love he’s hidden remains safe, held close to his heart and protected from that which wants, more than anything, for him to give himself over completely to the fear that tastes like sweet sherry on his tongue.

Jonah’s eyes flash a brilliant purple, and then it’s over. And Jon is alone.

He sinks back to the floor, and curls in on himself until the hurt is contained, and begins, once again, to weep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me? actually finishing this fic before midnight so it's posted on the day it's for? it's more likely than you think


	17. hypothesis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No.16 prompt: _hallucinations_
> 
> cw: body horror, unreality
> 
> ft. a bit of jonmartim, just for fun

It was probably foolish, Jon thinks belatedly. To assume that the second time he looked toward their next destination and saw nothing but _nothing,_ it would be another utopia. A place to rest. _Peace,_ even if he wouldn’t remember it.

This place is none of those things. Jon doesn’t know if this thing of spiraling webs and fractured realities has ever truly known _peace_. It might have once been Hilltop Road, if something as simple as a name could ever be assigned to a place that isn’t a place. Now, it’s less a _where_ and more a _when._ And _when_ is now, and then, and will be.

It’s everything that has never been, and Jon does not deal in hypotheticals.

The threshold steps over him, and he begins to fracture.

* * *

_“Here you go.”_

_Soft hands pass Jon a steaming mug of black tea—stronger than he usually takes it, but with enough milk and sugar to compensate. The steam fogs his glasses, and in the moment it takes them to clear, he remembers cold beaches, and figures dissolved into mist, and the last cries of a man who only wished to die alone. Then, his vision clears, and it’s gone. And Martin’s there, his skin a vibrant mix of pinks and peaches that wash away the greyscale still lingering at the edges of Jon’s vision. “Thank you,” Jon says, and he marvels at the way a simple set of words coaxes a wider smile onto Martin’s face._

_“So,” Martin says, settling next to Jon on the soft green couch they’d picked out a few weeks prior as an ‘early Christmas present for themselves’. “How was your day?”_

_Jon takes a long sip of his tea. “Oh, you know. Grading papers and trying to pretend like I don’t supernaturally know the answer to every question I’m asked.”_

_“So, the usual?”_

_“Yeah, pretty much.” Jon curls tighter into Martin’s side, unable to hold back a soft sigh of contentment as Martin’s lips press gently against the crown of his head. “You?”_

_“Bread is still bread, and when you own a bakery, bread is **pretty** much all there is,” Martin says, which draws a soft chuckle from Jon. “Oh, I almost forgot!”_

_He reaches behind him and pulls out a small, tightly-wrapped package. He presses it into Jon’s hands with a delighted anticipation. “I got you something.”_

_“I can see that,” Jon says, amused. He turns it over in his hands; it has an unusual weight to it, and it yields slightly under his touch. “What is it?”_

_“If I told you it would ruin the surprise!” Martin chides. “Just open it!”_

_Jon smiles, and tears away the paper._

_And freezes._

_“Martin,” he says slowly, nausea rising from within him. “What… what is this?”_

_Martin grins, and he has too many teeth. “It’s my heart!” he says pleasantly._

_The heart pulses in Jon’s hands, and he drops it on instinct. It hits the ground with a wet **splat.**_

_Martin looks at him, with a face slanted just a bit to the left, and says, “Why? Why did you do that, Jon? Do you not **want** it?”_

_The heart continues to beat, and Martin begins to laugh, and Jon begins to scream._

* * *

Jon’s convulsing on the ground, and Martin doesn’t know what to _do._

“Jon, Jon, _Jon_!” Martin says, placing as firm of hands as he thinks is safe on Jon’s shoulders and squeezing tightly, if only to keep him from knocking his head against the wall. “Oh, _fuck_ , please wake up Jon. I- I don’t know what to _do._ ”

He hesitates, then places a hand on Jon’s face, trying to get him to- well, to what, Martin doesn’t exactly know. But he has to do _something._

Jon’s eyes snap open in a brilliant flash of green and silver, and when they meet Martin’s, Martin can see _everything._

No. Not everything. Everything that’s _not_. The spaces between what’s known, what’s real _._ The stories never written, never known, never archived. It’s a spiraling, metaphysical blind spot, and it’s tearing Jon apart.

Martin tries to blink, but he can’t look away.

* * *

_“Hey, boss!”_

_Jon sighs, setting his mug aside. “I **really** wish you would stop calling me that, Tim.”_

_Tim grins and leans against Jon’s desk, his hand casually brushing Jon’s as he sets it lightly on the desk beside him. “Well, you know what they say about old habits. Besides, it’s only been—what, a week since you fired me? I believe I’m entitled to a bit of a grace period.”_

_“Tim,” Jon says, in the voice of someone long-suffering. “I did not **fire** you. I had you and Sasha and Martin transferred from the Archives.”_

_“Potato, potahto,” Tim says with a pout. This time, the brush of his hand is less than casual as he takes Jon’s hand deftly in his own and presses a chaste kiss to Jon’s knuckles. “You just didn’t want to deal with those pesky office romance guidelines. I **know** you saw last month’s email about them.”_

_Jon snatches his hand back, trying very hard to ignore the hot flush rising to his cheeks. “I- I did- that was **not** a part of my considerations!”_

_“Just a **very** fun coincidence, then,” Tim says with a wink and a shrug. “Either way, as **pleased** as I am that we can all stop dancing around each other at work—because I **know** it was starting to stress Martin out; that man is **not** as subtle as he thinks he is, particularly when he starts leaving half-finished cups of tea all over the flat, because we **both** know his nervous tick is making tea—I do have to wonder whether you intend to organize the **entire** Archives by yourself now. Even **you** , a chronic workaholic, have to acknowledge that that’s just a **bit** unreasonable.”_

_Jon sighs and runs a tired hand down his face. “Yes, I- I know. I just—well, you heard the tape. I… I’m stuck here. According to Gertrude—"_

_“If she’s even **remotely** telling the truth, and not just incredibly senile.”_

_“—I’m in danger now, and I will be until… until I die. Until something **kills** me.” Jon feels the terror rising within him again, the kind that had given him many sleepless nights shaking with panicked sobs, with two pairs of arms trying to wring from him the fear that now sits nestled so snugly within him. “But you—all of you—you don’t have to be. This- this place, it’s not safe for any of us, but if it’s just me down here, I… I think you’ll be safe.”_

_Tim hums, as if in thought. Then: “Well, that’s just bullshit.”_

_Jon sighs, because he **knows** what Tim’s going to say, because they’ve had this conversation so, so many times since Jon had uncovered the tape, covered in dust and cobwebs and tucked neatly under a loose floorboard. “Tim, I am **not** having this argument again, you **know** that I’ve done the research and what Gertrude said checks out—”_

_“No, that’s not it,” Tim says, and when Jon looks up, he sees that Tim is smiling, ever so slightly. “You think we’re **safe**? That locking yourself down here, scared and alone, is **safe**? I’m still going to die, Jon.”_

_Jon recoils slightly. “Wh… what?”_

_Tim’s smile grows wider, and his skin begins to peel away from his face. “I’m still going to be stripped, slowly, of everything that makes me **me** , and I’m going to die alone, and scared, and it’s going to be **all your fault.** ”_

_Jon scrambles back, away from his desk, and hits something warm and yielding behind him. Its breath hits his neck, hot and sticky, and he doesn’t dare turn around. “No, no it’s- it’s going to be okay, because I know now! I know, so- so I can fix this!”_

_Tim laughs, then, and it bursts every blood vessel in Jon’s ears. “That’s always been your problem, Jon.” He closes the gap between them and places a hand slick with blood beneath Jon’s chin, tilting his head so their eyes meet. Or, at least, where Tim’s eyes used to be. What used to be eyes. “ **Knowing.** ”_

_He presses a harsh, bitter kiss to Jon’s lips, and it swallows him whole._

* * *

Jon’s lying on the dirt and broken sod outside the shifting place that had once been Hilltop Road, and he isn’t breathing. But his eyes are wide—so, so wide, staring up at nothing, glazed over with a dull silver that reminds Martin, unsettlingly, of a blind man, trying desperately to remember what it felt like to see.

“Jon, please wake up,” Martin begs, holding Jon’s face between his hands and trying to cut through whatever fog has overtaken Jon’s sight, continuing to consume him from the inside out. “We’re out—you’re here now, you’re safe. Please, just- just _wake up._ The Eye can see you here, it- it should be able to help. _Why isn’t it helping?_ ”

“Because what he’s seen cannot be unseen,” a mild voice says, and the face that Martin sees when he turns abruptly to face the speaker is all too familiar. “I’m afraid,” Annabelle Cane continues, “that this is a bell that cannot be unrung. No matter how much you may wish it so.”

Harshly, Martin says, “This is _your_ fault.”

Annabelle looks amused. “Hardly. That place belongs to no one now. Not to the Mother, and certainly not to the Eye. It is… perhaps the only truly free thing that still exists in this world.”

“How,” Martin says, his voice tight, “do I _bring him back_?”

“You can’t.” Annabelle stares at them with something that might be pity, if it weren’t masked by the barest hint of a smile. “Not without sacrificing something in return.”

Martin doesn’t hesitate. “Show me.”

Annabelle’s teeth flash white as her smile emerges in full. “As you wish.”

* * *

_“I just think it’s a bit… **unrealistic,** that’s all.”_

_Georgie snorts, nudging Jon’s side with a bony elbow. “Oh, sure, because when I decided to make a podcast about supernatural phenomena, **realistic** was my first priority.”_

_“I just- **ghosts**?” Jon lets out a small laugh of disbelief. “I didn’t think you **believed** in ghosts.”_

_“Ghosts? Eh. Maybe, maybe not. The supernatural? Definitely.”_

_Jon hums, idly scratching underneath the Admiral’s chin where he sits curled on Jon’s lap. He earns a soft noise of content for his efforts. “I don’t suppose you have any **evidence** of—”_

_“Yes, yes, because god forbid we believe in anything without **evidence**.” Georgie rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling when she continues, “You could still help, you know. Could be interesting to have the whole **skeptic** angle going on. People would eat that shit up.”_

_“Plus, someone has to be there to reign in your frankly **excessive** use of sound effects.”_

_Georgie’s elbow meets Jon’s side again, more firmly this time. “Okay, **rude.** ”_

_Jon opens his mouth, perhaps to make another remark about Georgie’s tendency to ‘overuse slang to the point of incomprehensibility,’ when a motion just behind Georgie’s shoulder stops him cold._

_Georgie frowns at him. “Jon, what—?”_

_The figure moves again, materializing out of the shadows—or perhaps out of the wall entirely, it’s hard to be sure—and Jon hisses, “Georgie, **behind you.** ”_

_Georgie turns, and freezes. For a moment, Jon thinks that she’s just scared—paralyzed with fright, that someone’s broken into their flat, and she’s trying very hard not to make herself a target._

_Then, he sees the pale white hands, wrapped around her wrists and arms and throat, and he’s **sure** they hadn’t been there before, but now they’re squeezing, and Georgie is slowly choking, her face draining of color to match the hands in pallor, and the Admiral’s vanished, and—_

_And the figure is standing next to him now, looking at him with something he can only describe as desperation. “Jon, **wake up.** This isn’t real. This isn’t **you.** ”_

_Jon can’t stop staring at Georgie as she finally, horrifyingly, goes limp, and the hands slide away in slick satisfaction. He reaches out, like he’s going to touch her, like he’s going to do **something** to fix this, but his hand stalls halfway there, and he just lets out a strangled sob._

_“Jon. Jon, **look** at me.” There’s a hand, turning his face toward the figure, toward icy blue eyes and soft cheekbones and ginger curls that Jon somehow knows are soft to the touch. “Look at me, and tell me what you see.”_

_Jon stares into eyes that are entirely unfamiliar, and at a face that he is sure he does not know, and feels a hand that has never touched his squeeze it tightly. “I… I don’t…”_

_The hand cupping his face strokes a thumb over his cheekbone, so gently. “ **Jon. Look at me.** ”_

_Jon Looks. And everything else falls away._

* * *

Jon doesn’t need to know, Martin thinks, as they flee from the when that had never been Hilltop Road. About Annabelle, and about what had happened in that place that’s already slipping like water on wax from Jon’s memory, and about what Martin had to do to get him back.

About what Martin had to leave behind.

And as they walk further from that place that the Eye is blind to, and Martin feels the first of his memories begin to fade away, he remembers the way that Jon had blinked up at him, as if awaking from a trance, and said, “ _Martin,_ ” and he knows that it was worth it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as we reach the halfway point of whumptober (ahhhhhh!), i just want to say thank you so so much to everyone who has commented and left kudos so far! i probably read each comment ~5 times because i love them so much 💛


	18. spun silk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No.17 prompt: _i did not see that coming_
> 
> cw: spiders (incl. body horror), manipulation

**ARCHIVIST**

Knowing, seeing, it- it’s not the same thing as understanding. Every time I try to know what the Web’s plan is—if it can even be _called_ a plan—I see a hundred thousand events and causes and links, an impossibly intricate pattern of consequences and subtle nudges, but I- I can’t- I can’t hold them all in my head at the same time. There’s no way to see the whole, the- the _point_ of it all. I can see all the details, but it doesn’t provide context, or… intention.

I suppose the Web doesn’t work in Knowledge, not in the same way.

* * *

As soon as Jon steps foot over the threshold of Hilltop Road, the final stop in a journey that he thought would end at the stone tower that watched over all, he feels the tug of an invisible thread as it slips seamlessly into place, pulling the stitches that pass through time and place and personhood taught in kind. A million tiny events coalesce into a single picture, snapping into shape in Jon’s mind in unison with his sharp intake of breath.

He can See it now. The web that the Spider has wrought. And he finds that he has not, in fact, lost his ability to be surprised.

He barely has time to turn, to start the barest hint of a warning to Martin still standing just shy of the threshold, before the door slams shut.

“Hello, Archivist,” a voice says. It might have been Annabelle Cane, once. But as Jon has slowly given more and more of himself to his patron, so she has done so in kind. He doesn’t have to turn to See the version of herself she has become. He doesn’t have to ask to Know she hates it, and loves it all the same. “We’ve been expecting you.”

Jon takes one last look at the door and hopes desperately that Martin is safe. He Knows that Martin’s still stood outside the door, banging helplessly on the wood, though the sound rings through a different set of corridors. He hopes, all the same, that Martin will leave. That he won’t be ensnared in the webs that still cling to him.

He knows that in this world, luck like that is not something that happens in abundance.

“I know,” he says, and he tries to ignore the way the Spider’s laughter at that sends the web he’s caught in twitching. “I know _now,_ ” he amends. “And I don’t appreciate being _manipulated._ ”

This time, the laughter is solely Annabelle’s. “I’m afraid that’s rather my style, Archivist. We can’t avoid our natures, as I’m sure you know.”

Jon sidesteps the pointed distraction with a sharp, “Don’t change the subject. I Know what you’re doing now, and I’m sure _you_ know that I won’t be participating willingly.”

“Mmm, yes.” The webs around him twitch and quiver as dozens of black, spindly legs begin to move, in shuddering motions, toward him. “I _had_ hoped I could convince you otherwise, but I suppose time is short. Though, it _is_ too bad for Martin.”

“Wait,” Jon says, fear spiking red-hot within him. He tries, desperately, to Know how the web’s shifted, how the picture’s changed, what he missed. “What—?”

He’s silenced by the scuttling of legs down his throat, and the _click_ of a door swinging open.

* * *

**ELIAS**

I’ve been doing this a long time now, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned about the Web, it’s that it plays its own game. All you can really do is hope it doesn’t get in the way of whatever your plan is. Because the Spider usually wins.

* * *

Jon had stopped fighting it, after a while. Not because it would make any difference in the end—it was far, far too late for that. The threads tying them to their fates were too tightly wrapped and carefully planned to be broken by something as passive as _not_ fighting, _not_ seeing, _not_ caring. Perhaps he just thought it would give the Spider less satisfaction. To walk a broken and limp puppet across the scarred and barren earth, to a place where a man who thought himself a king had once bled out onto stone now stained a bitter copper, and to absorb within that puppet the entire weight of Knowledge and Paranoia and Watching that had laid this earth bare for so many uncountable months. To hear no scream, as the weight became more than any living thing could bear, and the Archivist became more _thing_ than _living._ To fill the gaping hole in reality with spiderwebs and puppet strings, pulling humanity up by its bones and walking it in tight lines toward a new world, and to know all the same that in the end, that which the Spider had destroyed did not give it the satisfaction of being afraid.

Or perhaps he just lost hope, as he watched the spiders move under Martin’s skin and the threads that would consume the world wholly begin to spool from him, and knew that though a linchpin cannot be removed, it can—with careful precision—be replaced.

Martin had never stopped fighting. Not when the Spider’s whispered suggestions had transformed into firm tugs of the threads that bound him when he failed to comply. Not when Annabelle Cane had leaned in close, as they stood just outside the tower that loomed over every place on earth, and whispered, “This is what needs to be done, Martin,” just as the sky began to melt and Jon began to scream. Not when he felt himself begin to pull thin, like wool spun lovingly into silky white thread, forming the web that would lace together the fabric of this new reality.

He finds himself able to let out one final, grieving sob when Jon’s cries fall silent, before he becomes undone entirely, and in his place, the Weaver begins to smile.


	19. cicatrix

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No.18 prompt: _panic attacks_
> 
> cw: panic attacks, mentioned major character death

Martin wakes to the chill of the winter air, permeating through the too-thin slats of the safehouse walls, and the small, hitched breaths of someone trying very, very hard not to cry.

“Jon?” Martin says, voice still groggy with sleep.

The noises stop abruptly, like a breath held in fear of breaking the silence. Then, tentatively: “I… I’m sorry I woke you.”

Martin pushes the last vestiges of sleep from his eyes with the back of a hand and turns to face Jon fully; his face is shadowed by moonlight, but Martin can see a wet shine in his eyes, the way his hands still clutch tightly at his arms, the heavy rise and fall of his chest. And his heart breaks with it. “Hey,” Martin says, so softly, his hand coming up to rest gently on Jon’s shoulder, just shy of a white-knuckled hand. “I’m here now. I’m here.” Then, more hesitantly: “What… what’s wrong?”

Jon tenses slightly under Martin’s touch, and he knows that it was the wrong question. “Nothing,” Jon says, with a bitterness that’s surprisingly strong despite the way his breaths are still coming out ragged and broken. “It’s- it’s all _fine._ ”

“Okay,” Martin says slowly, pushing himself into a sitting position and moving his hand so it rests atop Jon’s. Jon’s hands are clammy and flushed, and he hugs them tighter to himself under Martin’s touch. Martin doesn’t say anything, just waits, not sure what the right words are. If there _are_ any right words.

Finally, Jon huffs out a shaky laugh. “I… I think that’s the problem, actually.” A tear shakes itself loose, dripping down his cheek and onto the soft comforter below. “It’s _fine._ We… we turned the world back. Got rid of the fears. I- I feel better than I have in, in _years,_ and I have you, and everything’s so… so _wonderful,_ and yet…”

He curls in a bit tighter, like that’ll stop the tears now flowing freely down his face. “I can’t stop being _afraid,_ ” he says, barely audible over the choked sobs that he can’t quite hold back anymore. “That it’s all a lie. That I- I’ll wake up tomorrow, and you’ll be gone, and he- _he’ll_ be back, and this time, we- we won’t be able to—”

Jon cuts off with a sharp inhale, and Martin brings his free hand to Jon’s face and turns it toward him, gently, like one would treat a porcelain doll. Jon doesn’t resist the motion, and Martin’s heart breaks just a bit at the pain he sees reflected in Jon’s eyes, that no longer see all but that have already seen, and borne, and scarred the horrors of a broken world upon a soul heavy with grief and guilt. In them, he sees a flash of fangs, silenced by a pull of a trigger; a face, lost in the Void, pulled away by a thousand grabbing hands as an Eye decided she were better Watched; one who could not Watch and one who could not be Watched orbiting each other in discordant harmony, even as a yellow door swallowed them whole with a promise and a smile.

The eyes blink, and Martin pulls Jon tightly into his arms.

Martin can feel Jon’s pulse thrumming at a breakneck pace against his skin as Jon’s hands move from his own arms to Martin’s back, gripping tightly at the loose fabric there like a lifeline. There’s really nothing Martin can say, is there? This kind of fear is not one that can be dispelled by kind words and placations. This is not a paranoia born of imagined dangers, or corner-of-eye disturbances, or tickling _wrongrights_ at the back of a livewire mind. Its roots have spread, having been cultivated through time and tribulation and trauma. And its time has come to bloom.

So Martin grips Jon tightly, and presses soft kisses into his hair, and murmurs, “I’m here. You’re safe. It’s okay. They’re gone. Everything’s been made better. We’re happy.”

At the last one, Jon pulls back slightly, his eyes red-rimmed and so close to Martin’s he can see the last vestiges of silver-green within them, shot through hazel irises like marble veins. “Happy,” he repeats, sounding so unsure. Like it’s a word he was once familiar with, but that had been repeated over and over again until it lost all meaning, all significance. “It… it all seems like a dream. To- to be happy.” He slides a hand up Martin’s back, rests it tentatively against Martin’s cheek. “To be happy with _you,_ ” he says, barely a whisper.

Martin turns his face, and presses a gentle kiss to Jon’s palm. “Feels pretty real to me,” he says, just as quietly, with a hint of a smile. Jon returns the smile in kind, if hesitantly. Carefully, like he’s afraid Martin might shatter if he moves too fast, he covers Martin’s mouth with his own. Jon tastes of salty tears, and the sadness of a man who’s carried the troubles of the world on his shoulders and cannot quite shake the ghost of its weight.

Jon pulls back, and the look he gives Martin is joy and relief and sorrow and uncertainty in equal measure. And, beneath it all, that darkest fear still, a black canvas on which brilliant colors splash. Martin knows it will never leave Jon, as it has never left him, that backdrop of cloying fog on which his happiness is painted in thick, intentional brushstrokes. Covered, but never gone. And the picture upon it shines ever brighter against the darkness beneath.

“I love you,” Martin says, like a prayer, like a promise, like they’re the only words that have ever needed saying. Jon’s hands are thin and warm beneath his, and he holds them tightly, and revels in the fact that he will not have to make the decision to let go.

The tension holding Jon’s body in a constant state of fight-or-flight lessens, ever so slightly. And when he presses a soft, achingly hopeful _I love you, too_ into the crook of Martin’s neck as he folds back into Martin’s embrace, Martin can’t help but be grateful to a universe that has, finally, let them rest.


	20. accident's design

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No.19 prompt: _grief, mourning loved one_
> 
> cw: major character death, spiders, manipulation

**_Before_ **

They’re in the Panopticon, but it’s wrong. The air is heavy and cloying, weighing them down as they climb the stone steps to the room that Jon Knows sits at the top. Everything’s quiet; even their footsteps fall deafened and silent, in a way that makes Jon’s stomach twist and his hand tighten around Martin’s. Jon can See here, in more vibrant and saturated color than anywhere else, but it makes him dizzy and unbalanced, like the Eye is somehow… _more_ than itself.

His arm brushes the wall as they climb, and comes away coated in cobwebs.

“Martin,” Jon says quietly. A warning.

“I know,” Martin simply says in return. A promise.

They step into a room refracted with a hundred colors never seen, to a thousand lidless eyes and a man held aloft by thin white puppet strings, twitched into life by spindly black legs that extend to a shape sitting on the ceiling that Jon desperately wishes he could refuse to see.

“Hello, Archivist,” the thing that had once been Jonah Magnus says, its mouth unmoving. “And Martin, of course. We’ve been waiting, you know.”

“How polite of you,” Jon says flatly. He moves slightly, so Martin’s behind him. Protected. “So, this was your plan, then? Your _master manipulation._ To control the man who controls the world?”

It chuckles, an awful clacking sound that rings in Jon’s ears long after it falls silent. “I thought you knew _everything_ , Archivist. It must feel _exhilarating_ , having all those Eyes at your disposal. All that _knowledge._ ”

Jon wants to lie and say that it’s not. That it’s not the most bitter joy he’s ever had. That it doesn’t set his nerves alight with anticipation when he calls upon everything that he is now to reduce a Watcher to a Watched, or to plan their path through a torn and broken world like carefully laid puzzle pieces, or to drink the fear that rightfully belongs to the Eye and feel it electrify him from the inside out.

“Yes,” he says quietly, and tries to pretend he’s not, at his core, profoundly satisfied. “It is.”

“And yet,” the thing continues, “you ask the wrong questions. You… make _mistakes._ ”

“Jon,” Martin says, “let’s go.”

“Oh, but you only just arrived!” The thing does its best to smile; the Eye does its best to see the stringy webs snap to motion before they wrap themselves around Martin’s free wrist and pull him sharply, pinning him to the wall. Neither succeed. “And we have so, so much to discuss.”

Jon sees the muted terror in Martin’s eyes as he’s pulled free from Jon’s grip. He feels that own terror mirrored in himself as he tries to reach for Martin, and finds himself locked in place. Though perhaps that’s the terror, too. Freezing him, and turning his veins to ice in kind.

Stunned, all Jon can think to say is, “Mistakes?”

“Oh, don’t worry. Everybody makes them.” Then, after a light chuckle: “Well, almost everybody. Though you’ve made more than most, haven’t you? Would it make you feel better if I said that they were your own? I know you were concerned—that your actions weren’t your own. That you were _manipulated._ But don’t worry!”

The Spider drops more fully from the ceiling, and its puppet slumps to the ground, limp and boneless but with skin that ripples as thousands of tiny black bodies scurry underneath. “Everything is all _your_ fault. Isn’t that wonderful? Free will is such a lovely thing, isn’t it, Archivist? Though, of course, so messy. Imperfect.”

Jon’s throat won’t make the words he wants to scream at the thing that’s staring at him with eight unblinking eyes, a manifestation of the first of many fears to make him marked. It watches his increasing desperation with dispassionate eyes. The ones in the sky look on in equal measure. “But you are wrong,” it says, with a mouth that does not move, and in a voice that does not permeate the air so much as it permeates his mind, burning the words upon it like a brand. “What a disappointment it must be. To realize that a world serves you, and that it has been yours all along, only to lose it in the next breath. So no, Archivist. My plan was not to control Jonah Magnus, though he did serve his role well, in the end—if a bit hubristically. I want what I have always wanted. What I have always _planned_ for.”

A thousand little events slot into place in Jon’s mind. A black and white book, picked not-quite-so randomly from a charity shop as his grandmother dusted cobwebs off the cover. A gold lighter, igniting an addiction beyond that which smelled of soot and tar. A tape recorder, whirring of its own accord, beholden not to Beholding but to the spiderwebs of fear that had been born of picture-book pages, signed and sealed as the blood of a scared librarian painted the walls of the Archives and nestled snugly within an Archivist who did not yet understand what he was.

The picture within Jon’s mind blooms, just as a spindly leg brushes, almost tenderly, against his cheek. “How lovingly you have cultivated this fear that binds you to me,” it says, and Jon feels that same fear rise hot and heavy within him. “I do think we’ll make a wonderful new world together.”

Jon’s terror ignites, and the Eyes flash open around him, suddenly very aware that there is now, in fact, a fully woven Web to oppose. Threads twist and snap and grow tighter in equal measure, and Jon stumbles back, the muscles in his body reluctantly obeying his mind’s command.

He sees the webs part, ever so slightly. He sees the sky, bright red above and staring. He sees an opening, the slightest misstep, the microscopic twinge of the wrong thread.

He takes it.

And, as with most things done under free will, it’s messy. It’s imperfect.

It’s a mistake.

_**After**   
_

Jon’s not sure how long he’s been crying. Long enough for the dust to have settled on the pile of crumbled stone and sticky webs that had once been the Panopticon. Long enough for the repercussions of the destruction of a facet of fear to begin spreading throughout the world, like cracks in a glass through which water has begun to leak. Long enough for the eyes that had sprouted upon every inch of his skin, refracting the Spider in green-silver facets of itself and reflecting a fear that was of it and for it but could not be both, to seal shut.

Long enough for the blood on the side of Martin’s head to dry, and for his skin to start to take on that chill that makes Jon think, desperately, that he’s just fallen back to the Lonely. That he’s lost, but that he can be found. That his heart isn’t just as still and lifeless as Jon’s, which has found no reason to keep beating but that is no longer needed to sustain a body that has long since been unwilling to die.

Jon holds Martin tighter, and ignores the Knowing that presses insistently at the back of his mind, eagerly hoping to drink upon his suffering as he drinks upon that of others, and tries to See how it all went wrong.

There’s nothing to See. Nothing to Know. There was simply the room, crumbling around them under the weight of a thousand staring eyes, and the heavy stones that rained down upon them, and Martin, still stuck in a Web that refused to let him go. It was an accident—as close as you can come to one in this world of intentionality and observation. It was a mistake. It was _Jon’s_ mistake.

It was Jon’s _fault._

He holds Martin tighter, and lets the guilt and grief consume him entirely, and wishes desperately that this were a world that would allow him to die.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> back to our regularly scheduled sadness :(


	21. precipice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No.20 prompt: _toto, I have a feeling we’re not in ~~kansas~~ this reality anymore_
> 
> cw: mentioned hallucinations, darkness

Jon really isn’t sure what he’s expecting when he allows the crack that runs through the basement of Hilltop Road to swallow him whole, his hand clasped tight with Martin’s lest they be separated. Maybe a terrifying fall through space and time, pulled along by spiderweb strings and released at a whim into a place that Jon hopes, upon all hopes, could allow him to fix things. Maybe absolutely nothing, yet another disappointment in a journey littered with more wrong answers than Jon thought were even _possible_ now that he’s quite omniscient.

Maybe it would kill him.

The thought makes him loosen his grip on Martin’s hand reflexively, an instinct to push him away and out of danger coming over Jon for just a moment.

The darkness takes ahold of him and _pulls_ , and Martin’s fingers are ripped free from Jon’s. And then there’s nothing.

* * *

Jon wakes with a splitting headache, something small and smooth clutched in his hand, and the burning sensation at the back of his mind that something is very, very wrong.

_The headache:_

Beholding still exists in this reality. Jon can feel it at the back of his mind, those ocean waves that had, as Jonah’s statement tore free from his mouth, become a tsunami. But where before, it had been knowledge almost to the point of suffocation, and fear that oozed into his subconscious from every direction, and a world that knew only fear, now it’s barely a drip through the cracks that the fears push through into this reality, still sealed almost-tightly against their influence.

The Archivist still exists in this reality, and he’s both standing in the dusty, abandoned living room of Hilltop Road and sitting in an equally as dusty Archives, and Jon Knows that they’re both developing that same excruciating, paradoxical headache.

_The small and the smooth:_

_A gift,_ Annabelle Cane had said with a smile. _For you to find your way back. Once you get what you need, of course. It’s unique to this reality—quite special. Isn’t it wonderful that we’re working together now, Jon? I do think we’re going to be friends._

The compass spins, its slender white needle flashing against a golden spiderweb design behind it, and finally settles. It’s not pointing North. There aren’t any markers on the compass at all. But Jon Knows where it leads. The problem isn’t the knowing; it’s the _trusting._

But what other choice does he have?

_The wrong:_

Jon’s all alone in Hilltop Road. And this reality has never known a man named Martin Blackwood.

* * *

Martin wakes to complete darkness, and something scuttling over the exposed skin of his face.

With a yelp, he sits up, and the thing that Martin is 98% sure is a spider falls onto his hand. He brushes it off, perhaps a bit too forcefully due more to shock than to anger, and tries and fails to let his eyes adjust to the black.

“Oh, god,” Martin says, a dizzying nausea rising within him. “Am- am I _dead?_ Is- is this what happens when you die now? Just- just _nothing,_ forever?”

“I mean,” a voice says, too-close, “I suppose?”

With a significantly higher-pitched yelp, Martin scrambles backward and feels his back solidly connect with something rough and hard that nearly knocks the wind out of him.

There’s light laughter, gratingly familiar as it cuts through a second wave of shock, and the voice continues, “Dying _would_ be nothing forever, if I had to guess. But this is far from _nothing._ ”

His heart still beating at the approximate rate of a hummingbird’s, Martin snaps, “ _Christ,_ Annabelle, you scared the _life_ out of me.” Then, as shock makes way for terrified realization: “Oh, god. Where’s Jon? Where- where am I? _Is he all right?_ ”

“He’s fine,” Annabelle says, sounding amused. “Don’t worry; it could be worse. I could have _not_ caught you as you fell. You could be in an entirely different reality right now, stranded and lost and _alone._ ”

“Yeah, great. Thanks,” Martin says sourly. “And Jon? _Is. He. All right?_ ”

“Oh, come now Martin.” Her voice is closer now, and Martin flinches back a bit more into the wall. “A little _faith._ It’s not like _I_ can see where he’s gone, anyway.”

“ _What?_ ” Just like that, the terror is back, turning Martin’s hands slick with sweat. “How- how can you not _see_ where he’s gone, you’re the one who _sent_ him—”

“The _Mother_ sent him,” Annabelle corrects with something between a snap and a sigh. “I am not my patron, Martin, just as Jon is not his.”

“Then _how,_ ” Martin grinds out, “do you know he’s going to make it back?”

A pause. Then: “I don’t. But, unlike you, I _do_ have faith. In my patron, and in the web we’ve woven.” A small laugh. “Even in Jon, I suppose. And I suggest you do the same.”

Then, she falls silent, and nothing Martin says can get her to speak again. So he sits, leaning against what he’s _pretty_ sure is a wall, and tries _._ To have faith.

He just feels so very, very alone.

* * *

Four weeks later, Jon stands in the basement of Hilltop Road, clutching the compass in one hand and a small red volume in the other, and stares at a floor unmarred by cracks. His headache had become unbearable by the end of the first week, nearly bringing him to his knees as he reluctantly made his way to the Magnus Institute.

Slitting Elias’s throat was easy. Finding out he hadn’t been lying was harder. But at least Jon’s head no longer throbbed in pain. And he hadn’t yet found what he was looking for.

And then, at the end of week three, he had. The book was so small, just large enough that it wouldn’t fit in Jon’s pockets but barely bigger than his hand. Its title was in small, blocky letters pressed onto the front of crimson leather, emblazoned in gold: LOCKE AND KEAY.

The fact that this was a reality where Gerard Keay had been just a bit _too_ successful at following in his mother’s footsteps probably should have bothered Jon more, as he slipped out of a library burgeoning with newly-written books spun from the hands of a master bookbinder who was, himself, bound. But he thought of Martin, and of how he couldn’t sense him no matter how hard he looked, and tried not to look back as he left.

And now there’s nothing left to do but stare at a floor unfractured, through which no other realities bleed and writhe and scream, and to find himself, for the first time in so very, very long, completely ignorant.

The compass needle points stubbornly at the floor below Jon’s feet, and he wants to scream. He doesn’t drop to his knees so much as slump in sudden exhaustion, four weeks of little sleep and a constant, thrumming anxiety at the loss of someone who had been beside him for so, so long catching up to him as one. The compass makes a soft _click_ as it hits the floor, the book a softer _thud,_ and Jon begins to beg.

“Please, I- I have what I need,” he says, voice ragged from the choked tears that so very badly want to spring to the surface. “I’ve done what you asked. _Everything_ you asked. I- I did so many things, and I just- I _need_ to be able to come back.” His voice hitches slightly. “I can’t be stuck here forever, I- I _can’t._ ” His eyes slip closed, as they so often have, and he reflects upon the only image of Martin he has left. “I can’t,” he repeats, barely more than a whisper.

“Always so _dramatic_ with you two,” a voice says.

Jon’s eyes snap open to complete darkness. And then the floor drops out from underneath him, and he plummets.

* * *

It feels a bit odd, Martin thinks. Sliding the small red volume that contains the entirety of humanity’s fear made manifest in between a battered anthology of Keats’ poetry that Martin had picked up at a charity shop and a near-pristine Agatha Christie novel that Jon kept saying he meant to read. It pulses slightly under Martin’s fingers as he slots it into place and takes a quick step back, waiting for… well, for something bad to happen, he supposes.

There’s nothing. And Martin begins to believe, finally, that it’s over.

“It’s not an airtight prison, of course,” Annabelle Cane had said, when darkness had bled into too-bright light and Jon had tumbled out of it, turning the book over in her hands with a mild smile. “They’ll still be able to influence this world, as they could before, but we’ll all be just a _bit_ less… _watched._ ”

Martin was squeezing Jon to him like his life depended on it, trying and failing to stop the tears that dripped from the corners of his eyes that were equal parts relief and lingering terror. _Ten days_ he’d been trapped there, in that darkness that had almost driven him mad. Ten days for him, and four _weeks_ for Jon.

“I thought I’d lost you,” Martin sobbed, burying his face in the space between Jon’s shoulder and his neck and gripping the back of his shirt with white knuckles. “I- I was alone, I was so alone, and- and I didn’t know if you were alive, or- or dead, or—”

“It’s. It’s okay, Martin,” Jon said, but Martin could hear that small hitch in his voice, feel him shake slightly against him, and he knew that it was very much _not_ okay. “I- god, I thought I’d lost you too. That… that you’d been stranded somewhere, in a different reality, and that if I’d just held on tighter, I could have—”

“No, no, Jon, it’s not your fault.” Martin squeezed Jon tighter, probably a bit too hard, but he was still trying to convince himself that this was _real._ There had been a lot of… hallucinations there, at the end, in that place between realities where Annabelle had said, in a mild voice that made Martin want to scream, “We _wait,_ of course. Don’t want to leave too soon—it’s quite difficult to find the same reality twice, you know, and once we’ve closed this passage, well. It would be a shame to have to start all over again.”

Martin squeezed Jon tightly, and laced their fingers together, and reminded himself through every touch that this was _real_.

A gentle hand comes to rest on Martin’s back as he stares at the bookcase, and he startles under its touch.

“Ah. Sorry,” Jon says sheepishly, withdrawing his hand slightly. “Is… is it safe?”

“Yeah,” Martin says, still staring at the books. Then, with a small smile, because he just can’t help himself: “It’s under Locke and Keay.”

The look Jon gives him is plainly exasperated, but undercut with a fondness that makes Martin’s heart flutter in his chest. “Really?” he says with a small smile.

Martin takes his eyes, finally, from the books and studies Jon’s face instead. It’s still lined with worry and weariness, and probably will be for a long, long time, but underneath, there’s a warmth—a burgeoning, peaceful happiness—that makes a warmth of its own bloom within Martin. “Too soon?” he says.

“Mmm,” Jon says, his eyes alighting on the small red volume and sticking there, almost subconsciously. “I can still feel it in there. The Eye.”

Martin pauses, and finds it true when he says, quietly, “Me too.”

He laces his fingers through Jon’s, and they let their gazes linger upon the bookcase for another long moment, upon the spiderwebs that are already eagerly lacing their way up the wooden shelves, upon an end that seems altogether too easy and kind to be quite real.

Red leather slowly becomes caked with dust and cobwebs, and the world begins to recall a time when it was not Watched.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me @ me: don't write a whole reality hopping fic don't write a whole--
> 
> also me @ me: haha alternate realities go brrrrr


	22. tendrillar

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No.21 prompt: _i don't feel so well_
> 
> cw: unreality, dissociation, burning

_The Archivist sees himself in a warped and twisted mirror, just for a moment, before it shatters with a scream of agony. It ripples through corridors that twist right, and right, and right, and shards of silver-sharp litter a carpet that isn’t. Doors appear and disappear, red and black and hardwood and steel and all folding under the weight of a thousand eyes trying to understand that which is by nature unknowable and should remain a spiraling mix of uncertainty and distrust._

_He’s on the ground, if you could call it a ground. He retches up a shimmering cloud of static and curlicues that bore into his eyes in a desperate, furious plea to **get out, Archivist. Get. Out!**_

_Pinpricks turn into slices of red-hot pain as knives that are fingers and fingers that are not his turn his mind upon its axis, and he’s falling up, through a series of reflections of versions of himself that are not quite, and he’s shattering._

**_You do not belong here, Archivist. I. Did. Not. Invite. You._ **

_A yellow door flickers at the edge of his vision, and he focuses on it with every strength of Seeing and Knowing and Beholding he still retains in this place so removed from sanity, from anything within the realm of corporeality. It shudders and ripples and snaps into place for just a moment, its handle an irradiant glow of tremoring existence._

_The Archivist grips it tightly, feeling spiral scars scald themselves onto his skin and veins and mind, and pulls._

* * *

Georgie and Melanie spill out first, stumbling through a once-there-now-gone yellow doorway with eyes like stained glass and hands that grip the other’s white-knuckled and shaking. Basira’s there in an instant, gripping Melanie by the arm and asking, firmly, who she is. What’s her name? Yes, she has a name. She’s safe. She can’t see because she’s blind. No, it’s not from… from in there. Yes, Melanie. Her name is Melanie.

Georgie just stares at Melanie, like she’s seeing her for the first time, and whispers, “It… it was supposed to be safe. She said it would be safe.”

Then, the door shudders, in a way that doors should not be able to move. It twists, and implodes and explodes in equal measure, and becomes everything that it is not and everything that it has always been, and then, in a transition that Martin’s brain refuses to process, the door becomes not a door becomes _Jon,_ slumped onto the hard-packed dirt of the in-between that exists in places that aren’t feared.

“Shit, shit, _Jon_!” Martin cries, and then he’s kneeling at Jon’s side, and _oh god, is he breathing?_ There are curling lines pulsing just beneath the surface of Jon’s skin, stained a color that it hurts Martin’s eyes to look at and shifting in impossibly intricate patterns that fold in on themselves in ways beyond the confines of dimensionality. Martin places a careful hand on Jon’s face, and then pulls it back with a bitten-out curse. It’s like touching an open flame. “Jon, can you hear me? I- I need you to wake up, Jon. You’re- you’re out of there, you’re safe. I- I think she’s gone. Helen. _It._ Whatever. So you- you can _wake up._ ”

Martin looks at Jon, at the stillness of his face, at the lack of rise-and-fall of his chest, and feels a nausea born of six months of waiting and grieving and loss rising within him once again. “Jon, _please._ ”

He hesitates, just a moment, before steeling himself and placing a hand on Jon’s face once again. The heat is instantaneous, and Martin feels a scream of agony well up within him; he bites his tongue around it and refuses to move. With fingers on fire and spiral lines beginning to wind their way up his wrist, Martin moves his hand over Jon’s eyes, and tries, very hard, to remember what it felt like when Jon had done the same, standing outside yet another domain of fear and staring at the Panopticon in the distance, and had said, in that gentle voice that Martin adores more than anything, “Can you see it?”

“Yes,” Martin said, in a voice strangled by tears. “Yes, I- I can see it.” The cabin, where they had spent three weeks—three lovely, fleeting weeks—that might be the only weeks they would ever get, now dissolved into an eager host for those who wished for respite. And everything else, as he felt Beholding rush into him and through him, and he finally understood, if only a little, what it was to be an Archivist. Though he hadn’t told Jon that. And Jon, true to his word, had never looked.

Martin Looks now, as he calls upon a connection he so desperately wishes were not there, but that has been hardened through curiosity and certainty and a love for that which the Eye holds dearest above all else, and hopes desperately that it’s enough. “Jon, I need you to _look,_ ” he says, voice strangled in agony as the spiraling lines begin to thread through his chest. “Can you see it? Can… can you see _me?_ ”

The tears that drip from his nose sizzle into vapor against a hand that wishes nothing more than to let go. In a voice barely audible over the sobs threatening to rip their way from his throat, Martin says, “ _Can. You. See. Me?_ ”

The Spiral curls and pulses against his heart, and Jon opens his Eyes.

* * *

“For the _last_ time,” Jon says stubbornly, “I am _fine_ —”

His words dissolve into a series of stuttered, distorted noises, not unlike that of a record skipping or a tape recorder rewinding, as the spirals still laced under his skin dance with quiet laughter and he _glitches_. Martin really, really tries not to laugh when Jon snaps back into himself with a sulking frown etched onto his face, but, well.

“Sorry, sorry,” he says at the affronted look Jon gives him. “Look, I _know_ you want to get back to our terribly journey into Mordor, to throw the ring into Mount Doom and all that, but it’s going to be _really_ hard to travel when you’re still not recovered from- from the supernatural equivalent of a _really_ bad infection. You almost _died,_ Jon.”

“It’s not—” Jon cuts off with a frustrated groan. “I just. I don’t like _waiting._ ”

“I know.” Martin places a hand on Jon’s arm and pulls him in for a gentle embrace. Jon folds into him, and Martin tries to ignore the way that the spirals still entangled with his veins and tendons pulse in quiet relief as they’re brought closer to that from which they came. Tries to ignore the way that Jon’s eyes, just for a moment, swirl with a thousand colors never seen. “But we have time. Basira’s still trying to hunt down that lead on Jonah’s _weakness,_ whatever that means, and Melanie and Georgie are still recovering.” He lets out a sigh and holds Jon just a bit tighter. “Christ, they spent _two years_ in there, Jon. Or, at- at least what _counts_ as two years in that place. And Helen never told us. She smiled, and laughed, and told us she was here to help, and the _entire time_ two of our friends were just- just _lost_ inside her!”

“I think she meant to,” Jon says quietly. His breath tickles the side of Martin’s neck as he pulls back, just enough to look Martin in the eyes, then away at the ground. “To help. The corridors, they- they were safer than what’s out there, at the start. _She_ was safer at the start. But over time she just…” He sighs. “This world, it isn’t kind to those who cling to their humanity. And I suppose she just found it easier, in the end. To let go. After that…”

“… Melanie and Georgie were just an unfinished meal,” Martin says, and Jon reluctantly nods. “Yeah, I get it. That doesn’t make it right. _You’ve_ clung to your humanity well enough.”

With a smile, Jon says, “Well, I certainly had help.”

“Flatterer,” Martin says, and presses a light kiss to Jon’s lips. There’s a static that lingers after Martin pulls back, prickling his mouth with pins and needles; he wonders, absently, if that’s something he’ll have to get used to. The static, and the glitching, and the spirals inked upon their skin in mirrored concentricity. Perhaps it’s a part of them now, just as the eyes that gaze lovingly upon the Archivist stare within and through him and the swirling mist that longs to claim what once was its still lingers within Martin. Perhaps it’s just another mark: another story for the Archive.

Jon flickers once more, the distortion sending shockwaves of staticky laughter and dizzying wrongness through Martin. This time, when Jon groans, it’s in resignation.

“I… see your point,” he concedes, and he sounds so _grumpy_ that Martin can’t quite fight back another smile. Jon pulls free from Martin’s embrace, though a hand lingers on Martin’s before he threads their fingers together and squeezes lightly. “But soon.”

Martin squeezes Jon’s hand in return, and feels a bit of that unnatural heat return as he does so. “Soon.”

Jon smiles softly, the lines that spiral through his face and cluster around his eyes smiling in kind, and Martin can’t help but feel that this is not a sickness that can be cured by time. _Soon,_ he promises himself, as he guides Jon back to the cluster of blankets and sleeping bags they’ve been calling a bed, and hopes that the lies he tells himself will appease those that now make themselves home within their souls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fellas is it gay to have matching supernatural tattoos with your bf


	23. wilting lilies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No.22 prompt: _withdrawal_
> 
> cw: sickness, nausea/vomiting mention

Sunlight streams through double-pane windows, dancing upon dust particles hanging suspended in the air and painting the floor in brilliant yellows and oranges. It refracts off a pile of neatly-stacked books on a corner table, casts shadows over a wall dotted with framed photographs and pressed flowers immortalized in glass, and turns the Duchess’s black fur to a warm, radiant brown. The warmth it bestows as it hits the downy comforter of the bed is a relief against the chill of fall that’s begun to creep into the flat, and Martin’s cheeks are pleasantly flushed with cozy comfort as he blinks fully awake.

Lying on the bed next to him, curled tightly in on himself, Jon is shivering.

“Jon?” Martin says, somewhat groggily, and places a careful hand on Jon’s shoulder.

The flinch Jon gives under his touch is full-body and sends him into a short fit of coughing that makes Martin’s stomach squeeze with worry. Quietly, he says, “It… it’s getting worse, isn’t it?”

Jon tries to speak—probably to say that it’s _fine,_ like it was _fine_ last week when he collapsed in the kitchen or like it was _fine_ a few days ago when the plate of pasta Martin set in front of him had ended up regurgitated in the bin—but his lungs fail him and he succumbs to another fit. He tries to hide the way that the hand pressed to his mouth comes away stained with blood. He doesn’t succeed. And Martin feels the anticipation, the dull fear, that’s been building in him these last few weeks surge into something wild and terrified.

“Jon, _please,_ ” Martin says, more than a little desperately. His hand comes to rest on Jon’s upper back, trying to soothe some of his coughs, but it’s shaking too badly to be anything but a comfort to himself, a reassurance that Jon’s still here. “I- I _know_ what you said, and I know _why_ you’re not- but I, I have a few boxes of statements in the closet, from people who remember—”

“ _Martin,_ ” Jon says hoarsely, barely squeezing the word out through a throat that sounds like sandpaper and shattered glass. “I. _Can’t._ ”

“No,” Martin says, a sudden bitterness rising within him. “You _won’t._ ”

Jon draws in a raw, rattling breath, and Martin waits for the next round of coughs to overcome him, but after a moment, Jon relaxes slightly. He’s quiet for a few seconds. Then, flatly, he says, “Fine. I won’t _._ You _know_ why I won’t.”

Martin, a bit of venom still in his voice, says, “No, Jon, I don’t.”

“You were _there_ when—”

“Yes, I was.” It flashes through his mind in quick succession: a tower, bathed in red from the sky and red from the body lying on the ground; a deal, made with something with too many legs and not enough eyes and threads that twisted you into whatever shape it pleased; a _push_ and a _pull_ and a million eyes opening at once, and an Archive who was no longer an Archivist who was no longer a _who._ And then the world had snapped back, like a rubber band stretched to breaking, and Jon had snapped back with it.

He’d looked into Martin’s eyes, from where Martin had knelt to the ground and said his name in a voice thick with tears, and Martin had seen nothing but fear.

So Martin knows why Jon woke, days later, and said in a quiet but firm voice, “I’m not going to be the Archivist anymore, Martin.” He knows why Jon started staying inside, away from the fear still swimming within the unlucky few who had Seen just a bit too much, and why when the first markers of withdrawal hit, he just looked at Martin with sadness in his eyes and said, “I’m sorry, Martin.”

He knows. But he doesn’t _understand._

“I was there,” Martin continues, “so I- I know what it felt like to _lose_ you, Jon! And I- I can’t do it again, I just _can’t—_ ”

“You’d lose me anyway, Martin,” Jon says, in a voice that sounds as close to breaking as Martin feels. “It wouldn’t be _me_ anymore. When we fixed the world, created a new reality for the fears, it- it pushed me too close to the edge. If I give in now, feed the Eye… I won’t be coming back.”

“But you don’t _know_ that,” Martin presses. “The world is- it’s different now. It’s not all _fear_ anymore. Maybe, now, with so much else to- to look at, the Eye won’t—”

“It’s already _inside_ me, Martin.” Jon watches Martin, almost pleadingly; Martin can see the silver ring around his irises, a sliver of refraction trying desperately to press through. “The only thing I can do now is wait.”

“Wait,” Martin echoes, a sick disbelief curling within his stomach. “Wait to _die,_ you mean.”

Jon doesn’t say anything, but that’s confirmation enough, and Martin hates how the first thought that crosses his mind is that it’s not _fair._ It’s not fair that the world gets to live and they still suffer, and it’s not fair that Jon is _okay_ with that. It’s not fair that he’s _leaving_ Martin.

That last thought should probably make Martin feel guiltier. He just feels numb.

“I’m going to make tea,” he says, because that’s what he does when people are upset, right? He makes tea. He’ll just make some _tea,_ and Jon’s going to _die,_ but it’s fine, right? Because he doesn’t get the choice for it not to be fine. But he can choose to go to the kitchen, and turn on the kettle, and pick Jon’s favorite mug and that expensive loose leaf Earl Grey blend they got from that little shop in Sheffield out of the cupboard, and let the steam fog his glasses as he fills the mugs with a shaking hand.

Jon’s asleep when he returns to the bedroom, the sheets wrapped tightly around him, and Martin can see more clearly in the brightening light the dark circles under his eyes, the too-sharp definition of his collarbones, the way his chest just barely rises and falls. Martin sets their mugs on the dresser, and slumps against the wall under the window that’s still bathing their room in sunlight that promises warmth and joy and life, and finally finds it within him to cry.


	24. a rose by any other name would smell as sweet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No.23 prompt: _exhaustion_
> 
> cw: mild manipulation

Martin remembers what it had been like, vaguely—to step over the threshold of Upton House and feel months of sleeplessness and hunger and thirst and filth accumulate on and within him all at once. He’d almost forgotten what it felt like—being exhausted to your very core, being startlingly mortal in your physical needs. Being _human._ He’d reveled in it, just for a moment, as his mind recognized his body’s old habits and sighed with a sort of content.

Then, weakness and fatigue had crushed him with the weight of a thousand sufferings, and he’d collapsed. For 71 hours, apparently. He supposes when they say you can’t catch up on sleep, they don’t count on you staying awake for a literally uncountable amount of days.

Now, as he watches the last eye overhead blink out of existence, its gaze burning through him until the very end, he feels that same crushing exhaustion return tenfold, nearly collapsing him on the spot, as the world lets out a collective sigh and mortality makes itself known once more. His hand tightens around Jon’s as he feels his knees weaken and his mind begin to turn fuzzy and blurred, and he knows that Jon’s feeling the same by the way he sways slightly, bumping into Martin’s side.

“That’s… that’s it then?” Martin manages to say, tongue heavy with sleep that longs to claim it. “We… we fixed everything?”

“I…” Jon trails off, and Martin thinks it’s just the exhaustion catching up to him, but when he glances over with blurry eyes, he sees that Jon’s forehead is knit in confusion. “I don’t know,” he says quietly.

“You… you don’t…” Martin frowns, but the words slip from his tongue like water on wax and his mind can’t quite catch them.

“I… I can’t…” Jon slumps fully into Martin’s side, the sharp angle of his elbow pressing into Martin’s stomach. “Too many… threads…”

He sways, just once, and then collapses against Martin. And when darkness comes to claim Martin as well, he can do nothing but let it.

* * *

When Martin finally feels sleep release him, it does so to bright yellow light streaming in through a dusty window and a scratchy woven comforter slung over him that’s just a bit too hot. He groans and shifts, and his elbow comes into contact with something soft and pliant.

He looks over, and a vibrant warmth curls within his chest.

Jon’s next to him, still asleep and relaxed in a way Martin hasn’t seen him in months—hell, maybe in _years_. The persistent dark smudges under his eyes have faded into the barest hint of grey, and the lack of tension in his body makes Martin realize with a start that he’s actually _sleeping,_ all of himself contained within his own mind, no parts stretched to touch the minds of others, to consume their suffering even under the guise of rest.

He feels so unbelievably, uncontrollably happy, just for a moment, as peace finally begins to make its home in his chest.

Then, he remembers what had come _after_ the peace and happiness—the blank stares, the lost trains of thought and memories that slipped through fingers like water, the lack of _Jon_ Martin saw when he looked into Jon’s eyes as they stepped back over the threshold and into the thrumming fear that called to them—and he’s seized by an all-too familiar terror.

He reaches for Jon, but his hand stills just shy of his shoulder. He hesitates, just a moment, before his fingers curl back in toward his palm and he slowly retracts his hand. It might be the same as before, he thinks with a twisting sensation deep within him. It might not. Either way, he just- he _can’t_ interrupt what little true peace Jon may have left. Not over a fear that can be dealt with in its own time. If it need be dealt with at all.

Besides, his stomach is currently doing its very best to consume itself, and his tongue is dry and sticky with thirst, so he carefully extracts himself from the bed and moves to the door of the bedroom. It hasn’t escaped his notice that this is _not_ the safehouse, nor is it anywhere that strikes a sense of familiarity within Martin. His hand closes on the door handle, and he offers a quick prayer to a God he has long since stopped believing in that this safety has been offered by genuine hands.

He opens the door and steps out.

He’s alone. Perhaps that should be a relief, to not have fallen into yet another trap with no escape. Perhaps he should be disappointed, to not see a familiar face—though there had been so few left at the end.

He just feels tired again. So, with a sigh and weary steps, he makes his way to the kitchen to put the kettle on.

* * *

Upon the fridge, adhered with a magnet of a black-and-white cartoon spider:

_Martin,_

_I do hope you and Jon are doing well. I suppose congratulations are in order—it couldn’t have been easy, bringing the world back into balance. Of course, now that the Ceaseless Watcher has—well, has **ceased watching** , I suppose—there’s a gap to fill, but don’t concern yourselves with that. We have it **quite** covered. Just rest now—you’ve earned it._

_As for the house—it’s yours. Call it a thank-you gift for all you’ve done these past few years. You’ll find the cabinets well-stocked, and there’s a university nearby with two staff openings that I believe you’ll find suit your needs exactly. It really is a lovely little town—quite similar to that Scottish one you both seemed so fond of. That one’s gone now, of course, remade in this world’s recreation, so this will have to do. But don’t worry—you’ll like it here._

_Also, please do let Jon know that should he need anything—anything at all—all he has to do is ask. After all, this is a wonderful new world that we live in—I think he’ll find that it will suit him quite nicely. Do make sure he remembers that._

_Annabelle Cane_

In the other room, Jon blinks awake.

* * *

They’re sitting in one of the green spaces of the university, on a wooden bench shadowed by a spiraling tree that looms just a bit too tall overhead. The birds that chirp from its branches are slightly too low-pitched, just a bit too harsh. Though they’re the only ones who notice. Who _know._ Who, when the world had been flipped on its axis, had been fortunate enough to Watch.

Jon stares at the employee badge in his hand, proudly proclaiming him a new professor of information and library science, with a detached look in his eyes. “I… I just _asked_ for it, Martin,” he says, running the pad of his thumb over the block letters that spell out his name: _Dr. Jonathan Blackwood-Sims._ “He… when he handed it to me, he said, ‘Welcome aboard,’ but his eyes, they were… I don’t think he actually _saw_ me.”

Martin fiddles with his own employee badge, labeling him _Admissions Coordinator_ like that’s something he’s even remotely qualified for, and remembers with an unsettling twist of his stomach the way the man who handed him his badge had looked as he moved, his motions just a bit too stilted to be quite his own. He thinks of the note, left pinned to the fridge, and Jon’s maintained coherency, and the _gap to be filled,_ and doesn’t particularly like the picture it paints. “Maybe he was just… tired,” Martin says, knowing it’s a bad excuse but letting it blanket them anyway. “And… thought you were someone else.”

The dry look Jon shoots Martin matches that of the picture on his employee badge, and Martin gives up. “Yeah, okay, fine. Point taken.” They sit in silence for a few moments, letting the sounds of wind through the leaves and the gentle murmur of students passing by numb them to the growing unease within. Then, quietly, Martin says, “So that’s what Annabelle meant, then? When she said to- to _ask._ ”

Jon stares at the ground. “I don’t know.”

“Because I would have thought that with the Eye gone, you’d be- I don’t know, _released_ or something, not just pawned off to the closest available fear—”

“I don’t _know_ , Martin!” Jon’s eyes are alight with a raw desperation as he turns them from the ground to Martin. “I- I don’t _know._ I don’t _feel_ different, but- but I also don’t feel like I’m fading, like I’m losing myself like I did before. I don’t _know_ if that means that I’m- I’m just _severed_ completely, if that’s even _possible_ , or if I’m tied to the Web now, or if it’s something new entirely, something in between the Eye and the Web, or if it’s none of those things! I _can’t_ know anymore.” Jon’s hand grips the badge so tightly Martin can see it cutting red lines into the flesh of his hand, and a subtle terror begins to creep in behind the desperation in Jon’s eyes. “I can’t See _anything,_ but apparently I can Ask, and I don’t know which is worse.”

“Oh, Jon,” Martin says softly, and he puts his arm around Jon’s shoulders and pulls him tightly to his side. Some of the tension bleeds out of Jon as Martin presses a gentle kiss to his temple. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s.” Jon pauses, his breath hitching slightly. “It’s fine. It’s… whatever this is, I don’t think it’s something I can get rid of. Not… not like before. I’m… I’m stuck. Trapped.” Jon lets out a short, bitter laugh. “Though I suppose that’s rather the point, isn’t it?”

“Maybe.” Martin glances out over the green, at the flowers coming into full bloom in the warm early summer air and the stone pavers that carve their way across the grass. It’s so _alive,_ in a way that fills him with so much love and longing and joy it hurts him to contain it all, and he gets to share it with Jon. Jon, who he loves, who he married as soon as he possibly could because he couldn’t bear to lose his chance again. Jon, who he’d longed for for so long, through the Archives and the fears and the terrifying moments in that destroyed world when Martin thought he would lose him. Jon, who _is_ his joy, chasing away the tendrils of fog that once curled around his heart and that still nip at his heels when he isn’t paying close enough attention. He can think of a thousand different words to describe what this world is to him, and what this world is to Jon, but _trapped_ is not one of them.

The Web doesn’t do favors, and it doesn’t offer kindness without expecting something in return. But this, Martin thinks, feels less like a _kindness_ or a _favor,_ and feels more like a _thank you._ And when faced with the scale of human suffering, a _thank you_ feels quite all right.

“It could be worse,” is all he says in the end, because he knows that Jon doesn’t want to hear another placation about how it’ll all be fine. Then, with a small smile, he adds, “After all, we have jobs now, and there’s a Sun in the sky again, and I love you.”

There’s still uncertainty and distrust brimming in Jon’s eyes, undercut with something Martin thinks might be curiosity, but he lets himself relax into Martin’s side with a sigh. “I… suppose.” His hand finds Martin’s, and he threads their fingers together and squeezes, just once. “I love you too.”

The wind blows through Martin’s curls, bringing with it the scent of cut grass and far-off rain, and he lets it soothe the last vestiges of nervousness that linger at the back of his mind, telling him that though this is a world that has righted itself, it has not quite given them the courtesy of being free.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, posting this prompt at 1am: _exhaustion_


	25. absolution

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No.24 prompt: _forced mutism, sensory deprivation_
> 
> cw: restraints/imprisonment, suffocation/asphyxiation, manipulation

“Do you remember,” Jonah says, as he ties the ropes binding Jon’s wrists together, “what I said, Jon? Those words I wrote, that you spoke aloud so lovingly?”

Jon tries to scream. Tries to squirm. Tries to _move_ at all. But he’s frozen in place, his body failing to obey his commands. Still, he manages to bite out a venomous, “ _Fuck. Off._ ”

Jonah hums in something akin to displeasure. “I said,” he continues, moving out of Jon’s line of sight and behind him, “that _I_ was to be the king of this world, and that _you_ were to be the conduit for its becoming. So you can imagine how _displeased_ I am that that has not. _Happened_.”

Even with hot terror coursing through him, Jon finds it within him to laugh, a bit cruelly. “Sorry to _disappoint,_ ” he says bitterly. “That’s what happens when you _use_ other people as tools to get what you want. Sometimes, they surpass you.” He laughs again, humorlessly. “Perhaps our _patron_ has decided that it prefers the tool to the self-obsessed, conceited, _scared_ man who wielded it.”

The words, said more to mock than to serve as truth, ignite within Jon a curiosity. He still can’t move—the sticky strands of Web he can See clustered around Jonah’s soul have seen to that—but he can _speak,_ and a wild desperation overcomes him so suddenly he doesn’t stop to think before opening his mouth again.

“ _Feel it._ Feel the terror that the whole _world_ feels as the—”

A hand presses tightly over Jon’s mouth and nose, forceful enough that Jon feels something in his nose shift and crack under the pressure. The words are forced back inside him as Jonah hisses in his ear, “How _dare_ you. Do you think the Eye would destroy me? _Me?_ Because _you_ asked it to?” The hand squeezes tighter, and Jon suddenly finds it very, very hard to breathe, like his lungs have refused to follow his command. “How _pathetic._ ”

Jon tries to say something— _anything_ —but he has no air left within him to expel the words. His vision is blackening at the edges, in a way it shouldn’t be able to anymore, and a small, desperate part of him casts a plea to the sky above, to the thousands of unblinking eyes there, to _help him._

It doesn’t. Like it hadn’t helped Basira when she wandered the Void, slowly losing her Sight to the darkness that lay within. Like it hadn’t helped Georgie or Melanie when they opened a cracking yellow door and stepped into the fracturing corridors beyond, guided by a sharp smile and a beckoning finger that spoke of trust and faith. Like… like it hadn’t helped Martin when the webs had laced across his wrists and mouth and eyes, leaving Jon with only the ghost of a desperate, pleading pair of dark brown eyes as the Web took what it had always believed it deserved.

The Eye is fond of you, until it’s not. Until it decides it would rather have you scared.

“I hope you’ve enjoyed yourself, Jon,” Jonah says; his voice is distorted, as if through several feet of water, and Jon knows it won’t be long now. “Playing at being a god. But it’s over now. You. Have. _Lost._ ”

Then, there’s nothing but black.

* * *

Jon can’t See.

He can’t speak, or move, or feel, or do anything that may in any way indicate that he is still _alive_ and within a world that endeavors to elicit nothing but pain from him. But he Knows that his heart still beats in his chest, and that air still fills his lungs, and that he can still cry, because there are tears streaking down his cheeks even as he wills them not to, because he will _not_ give anything the satisfaction of seeing him unravel entirely.

The tears still come, and his chest still seizes with agony as he Knows that he is trapped, in a place in which he is Seen but from which he cannot See in return. He’s been blindfolded and gagged and chained to the earth in every way but the literal, but the fear of restraint and the knowledge of absolute _helplessness_ tastes just as sweet upon the palate of that whose only job is to Watch, and to that which revels in those caught in Webs of their own design.

Jon wants to collapse. He wants to sob, to scream, to command his way out of this place that turns his Sight inward, serving the sole purpose of reminding him that he is alone, and that he is scared, and that he will never die. But this place does not care what he wants. It only cares that he is trapped, and that he is lost, and that he is aware of it every single moment for the rest of eternity.

He cries, and knows that the earth consumes his tears with hungry pleasure.

Above, bathed in the gaze of a thousand eyes, a king completes his coronation.

And a suffering world continues to feed that which is no longer his.


	26. the armed eye beholds the stars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No.25 prompt: _blurred vision, ringing ears_
> 
> cw: disorientation, passing out, hospitalization

The eyes in the sky begin to blink out, one by one, and for a moment, the only thing Jon can feel is impossible, dizzying relief.

Martin grips his hand so tightly he’s beginning to lose feeling in his fingers, but he doesn’t care. He squeezes back in kind as they watch the wet, writhing ground still, the trees that loom in the distance and ooze blood like sap become nothing but hardened cellulose once again, the creeping mist on the horizon dissipate with a sigh of agonizing frustration. A sticky web strokes his cheek once, almost a kiss, as it detaches from his soul and unwinds back to that which spooled it, so many years ago, when he had been faced with a door that he had not opened, in the end.

Then, he had been faced with one that he did. And that which had wanted him so badly to open the first had helped him close it.

“Doesn’t it _worry you,_ Jon?” Martin had said, staring at the paper Jon held in careful hands lest he crumple it. Its curling script spoke of puppets, and exact calculations, and an inverted world that could be righted with the words of the one who catalogued them. “That the Web _wants_ us to fix the world? Seems a bit- I don’t know, _disadvantageous_ to their entire existence, yeah? A fear god, not liking a world ruled by fear? What’s not to like?”

“Not ruled by _fear_ ,” Jon said, running a thumb in wonder over the words that would fix _everything._ Right his wrongs. Heal a cracked and broken world that he had fractured. “Ruled by the _Eye._ I… I don’t really think the Spider likes to come in second place. Besides, this…” He looked at Martin, almost desperately. “This could be our _only chance._ Please, Martin, I… I could finally _help_ people. Help- help _everyone_ , instead of just- just _knowing_ that I can’t, that even if I could save one person, it wouldn’t _matter—_ ”

“Okay!” Martin’s hand on Jon’s arm was gentle, the small smile on his face reassuring. “Okay. If you… if you say this is what we have to do, then I believe you. I trust you, Jon.”

Jon returned Martin’s smile in kind, and hoped that soon, he would be rid of the touch of guilt that always accompanied it. “Thank you, Martin.”

He pressed a soft, gentle kiss to Martin’s lips, and let his hand linger on the side of Martin’s face for as long as he could justify it to himself. Then, he turned his attention to the statement of the Mother of Puppets, regarding the shutting of doors. And he began to read.

“It… it worked,” Martin says now, genuine disbelief and a giddy excitement coloring his tone in equal measure. “Christ, it- it really- everything’s fixing itself, Jon!”

“Yes, it- it seems to be,” Jon says, as the flashes of battle in the distance subside and a section of sky that had detached itself from the earth below sinks back into submission. He blinks against the fog that swims across his vision, covering the wailing sobs of those trapped and alone, and the ringing of the bells of a thousand trapped souls buried six feet underground filling his ears to capacity.

He blinks again, in time with the eyes above. And the fog persists. And the ringing begins to crescendo.

His hand slips from Martin’s, and he staggers backward, away from the cacophony that’s grown to fill his mind—a dissonance of screams and begging and terror and pain, resolved into a single, high-pitched whine that cuts through everything else and burrows deeply into his brain, making it hard to- hard to _think,_ or- or to _Know,_ or—

“Jon?” Martin says—or Jon _thinks_ he says. He can see Martin’s lips move, barely, through the fog that’s turning his vision milky white, and they’re saying his name, outlining more words that grow increasingly desperate as Jon’s legs give out from under him and he crumples. There’s pain as he hits the ground, certainly; something in his wrist gives as he tries to catch himself on instinct, a _snap_ of bone that wouldn’t have happened before, tucked under the protective wing of that which now gives him one last, long, impartial stare before it ceases to be, and the sky is just a sky once again.

Jon is aware of a world without constant fear, just for a moment, and he knows that he hates it just as much as it hates him in kind. Then, he loses himself to fog and darkness.

* * *

_“I don’t **want** this to be like last time, Basira—”_

_“Yeah, well, you don’t really get much of a choice in the matter, do you? I **don’t** know what you want me to do about this.”_

_“I…” A sigh, heavy with a burden that has been carried once before and so can be again. “Nothing, I guess. This… this is just what it is now.”_

_A pause, palpable with pity. “Jon fixed the world, Martin. Yeah, he fucked it up in the first place, but he… if this is what it took to **fix** it, I don’t think he would hesitate, even if—”_

_“Even if he knew it would **kill** him?”_

_There’s a small intake of breath, just a hitch. It’s unclear if it’s from Martin or Basira. “He’s not dead, Martin. He could still wake up.”_

_“Yeah, sure.” It doesn’t sound sure. It sounds on the verge of tears, but like he is trying very, very hard to hide it. “Then why hasn’t he?”_

_“Martin—”_

_“No, no, this- this is **different**. He… he could come back, he- he’s stronger now, so I just don’t understand **why** —”_

_“I don’t know, okay?” Said with bitterness, and just a bit of grief of her own. “I… I don’t know. Maybe he can’t, now that the world isn’t all fear. Maybe he’s not human enough anymore to survive here.”_

_“ **Christ** Basira, now? After everything, you **still** think that it matters whether any of us are human or not? It’s all a- a joke! Always has been! Human, avatar—it’s all meaningless! All there is are **people.** ”_

_“Maybe.” Sadness, thick as molasses and just as cloying, drips from her words. “But that doesn’t mean that I’m wrong.”_

_A final pause, during which neither speak but the air hangs heavy with all that has never gone spoken. “I just- I can’t. I can’t lose him, Basira. Not now. Not after everything. Not ever.”_

_“I know.”_

_There is nothing more to say. All that has been said hangs suspended in pretty pearls of glistening silver pain and fear and loss, trapped in a mind that cannot yet be released from its confines. Not when there are so, so many pretty things here._

_Not when there is so much yet to be archived._

* * *

The Archivist wakes one year, three months, sixteen days, twenty-two minutes and seven seconds after the rebirth of the world to bright light and cloying antiseptic, and a mind free of the constant press of terror and fear and knowledge, and knows that this world is not one that will welcome him.

Then, three hours, twelve minutes, and eighteen seconds later, warm arms envelope him and sticky tears hit his skin and a sobbing, shaking voice says that it’s missed him, that it thought he was never going to wake up, that it thought it lost him, that it was so _scared._ The fear spikes through him like adrenaline, so mild compared to the horrors the Archivist has spent so long tidying and cataloguing, but so deeply _familiar_ all the same _._

Jon looks at Martin, eyes rimmed red with tears and cheeks splotchy but _smiling_ now, laughing in short, hiccup bursts as he holds Jon tighter and says, in a voice squeezed with wild happiness, “I love you, Jon. So, so much.”

“ _Martin,_ ” Jon says, like a prayer, and presses himself closer into Martin’s embrace.

No, this world will not welcome him. He is too much of fear for that now, too much the Archive than the Archivist to fit within a place to which his Eyes have been nearly blinded, vision blurring objects into shapes and fears into obsoletion. But as Martin holds him closer, and presses soft kisses against his temple, and whispers adorations against his skin, he thinks that it won’t matter. Because here, now and forever, he is wanted.


	27. acherontia atropos

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No.26 prompt: _blindness_
> 
> cw: eye trauma, self-mutilation, blood/gore
> 
> this is a bit of a continuation of prompts 5 and 7, but it can easily be read as a standalone fic as no prior context is required

“Okay, am I going to have to be the one to say that this is a _terrible_ idea?”

Melanie’s standing in the doorway to the half-crumbled house they’re currently squatting in, her arms crossed across her chest and her face schooled into an impressive expression of disbelief and distaste. “Well?” she says, when nobody responds.

Jon’s the first to break the silence. “Melanie, it’s—”

“Nope, not you,” Melanie says curtly. “Even your good ideas are still terrible ideas.”

“Well, that’s hardly fair.”

“Guys, stop,” Basira says tightly. “Are we doing this or not?”

“There’s no _we._ ” Jon stares down, at the knife he holds in hands that are trying desperately not to shake. “It’s my choice.”

“Yeah,” Melanie says, “but your _choice_ could get us all _killed_!”

“Or,” Jon says, his tone rising to match hers in intensity, “it could fix _everything!_ It’s not like we have many more options.”

“Guys, _please_ —”

“Martin,” Melanie says, “ _please_ tell me you’re not okay with this.”

Martin’s sat at Jon’s side, and his eyes are fixed firmly on the ground. He doesn’t look at the knife. He doesn’t respond.

“ _Christ._ ” Melanie pushes off the doorframe with a sour expression. “ _Fine._ Do what you have to, I guess. But I won’t be any part of it.”

“Melanie—” Georgie says from next to Basira, but Melanie’s already gone, her cane clacking against the broken tile floors. “I, um. I’m going to go make sure she’s all right. You… are you going to be okay?” She looks at Jon, and her eyes are full of perhaps the first real pity he’s seen in them since he arrived at her doorstep so long ago, frightened and alone and running from a monster that had made its home within him before he even knew what it was. He looks back, and thinks that this will be the last time he’ll see her face.

“Yes,” he lies. “I… I’ll be okay.”

She pauses, just for a moment, then nods. Then, she leaves, and Jon wishes belatedly that his last memory of her face would have been one of joy.

“ _Are_ you going to be okay with this?” Basira asks after a few moments of tense silence. “No, better question: are you going to be okay with what comes _after_ this?”

Martin stiffens by Jon’s side, but remains silent.

Jon stares again at the knife and imagines the moment it will puncture sclera and hit nerves like hot coals. It makes him want to drop the knife, to be sick, to give in to that same cowardice he’d succumbed to back when the option had first presented itself to him. Martin had stopped him then. Martin would stop him again now, if he let him.

Jon looks at Martin, at the tension in his shoulders and the eyes that stare resolutely forward, and knows that he can’t let this be Martin’s decision. Not this time.

“Yes,” Jon says, and tries to pretend like he means it. “I will be.”

Basira pauses, just for a moment, before nodding. “Okay. I’ll go get the bandages.”

* * *

_“There are three scenarios,” Jon said, in a voice much calmer than the fear threatening to consume him. “The first is that by doing this, I reverse the effects of the ritual, and the world goes back to how it was.”_

_“And how likely is that scenario?” Basira asked, her arms crossed and her face skeptical._

_“I don’t know,” Jon said honestly. “I can’t know the future, or any hypotheticals. I can tell you that it’s possible; how possible… I won’t know until I do it.”_

_“You mean until you **blind** yourself,” Martin said in a voice controlled to the point of pain._

_Jon’s stomach twisted, and his voice broke in spite of himself when he said, “Martin…”_

_“What are the other two?” Basira’s voice was tight, in the way of someone who has long since learned that emotions are a dangerous thing._

_Jon spared one last glance at Martin, at the clear lines of hurt etched into his face, before sighing and turning back to face Basira. “The second is that nothing happens, good or bad. I’ll be blind, and nothing will have changed.” He paused, just a moment, before continuing, “And the third is that… is that this reality collapses.”_

_“I’m sorry, **what**?”_

_Basira’s face was a mask of shocked disbelief; Martin’s looked almost hopeful._

_“If I’m gone,” Jon said hesitantly, “it is **possible** that this world could… vanish as well. I- I don’t know how **likely** it is, of course, but it is possible.”_

_“No,” Martin said, watching Jon with wide eyes. “You **can’t** —”_

_“So there’s a one out of three chance that we lose everything?” Basira cut in, and the hope that had begun to crystalize in Martin’s eyes—that now there was a reason not to try, that he could convince Jon **not to try** —shattered upon impact. It shattered Jon’s heart in kind. “It’s… it’s not **great** odds, but it could be worse.”_

_“It could be **better**!” Martin fixed Jon with one last wildly desperate look. “Because there’s a fourth scenario, and that’s that you **die,** Jon!”_

_Softly, in a voice undercut by the weary pain of one burdening the sins of the world, Jon said, “I can’t think about that, Martin. Not when there are so many suffering. If this is my way to help them—”_

_“By **sacrificing** yourself? No, no no no, **no.** There has to be another way—”_

_“There. There isn’t.” Jon placed a hand on Martin’s cheek, tried for a smile. It didn’t quite stick. “We’ve tried them all. This is… this is all that’s left.”_

_Martin looked at Jon for another long moment. Then, his expression hardened, and he looked away. “Fine,” he said tightly. “It… it’s your choice.”_

_Jon’s hand lingered on Martin’s cheek a moment longer, trying to provide a comfort that he wasn’t sure he could anymore. Then, with an exhalation, he let it fall._

_“So,” Basira said, “what do we need to do?”_

* * *

The pain is white-hot and excruciating, beyond that of the sizzle of flesh on a hand immersed in molten wax or a pair of ribs slipped free from unbroken skin or a hundred worms wriggling eagerly through soft flesh.

The knife clatters to the floor, and Jon falls into darkness.

* * *

_There’s so much blood._

_It’s soaking through the bandages._

_Outside the window, the eyes stare impassively in at ones that cry and ones that search for more cloths to wrap ones that bleed and bleed and bleed._

_Reality shivers for a moment as another Watcher becomes Watched before settling again. An Archivist becomes undone, and a body that remembers death longs to return to it. A world where death does not come to those who deserve it maintains stasis, and a heart continues to beat. And wounds continue to bleed._

_“It didn’t work,” a voice says, staring out the window at a landscape still laced with trembling, woven threads of fear._

_Somewhere far beyond, a Spider sits in its web, feels the threads around it twitch and throb, and smiles._

* * *

“Here.”

Soft, warm hands press a softer, warmer shape into Jon’s arms whose purrs vibrate against Jon’s chest. Jon lets his hand rest on the Admiral’s fur, still soft and clean despite existing within a world that is not so, and feels a bit of tension bleed out of him.

“Thank you,” he says, as the Admiral begins to knead his stomach. “I… are you all right?”

Martin scoffs; the bed Jon’s lying on dips slightly as a weight settles upon it, just shy of Jon’s hip, and a hand covers Jon’s where it rests on the bed. “Yeah, I’m all right. But _I’m_ not the injured one. Does it… do you need anything else?”

Jon thinks of the eyes that have settled on him once again, their weight pressing against the surface of his skin and sticking there, eagerly waiting for him to be afraid. For them to have something to Watch. “Can…” he begins, hesitantly. “Can you tell me what it looks like? Out- out there?”

Martin’s sigh is slight, barely there, but with nothing to occupy his eyes, his ears pick up the slightest audio cues, in a way that makes the hidden difficult. “Jon, I don’t think—”

“Just. Please.”

Martin sighs, a bit louder this time and in resignation, and says, “Okay.” The weight on the bed lifts, and footsteps creak their way across hardwood floors that bend just a bit too much under his weight. There’s a pause, and then: “It’s- it’s like before. The sky is still all eyes, and they’re- they’re, um. They’re still watching you. There’s still that old museum with the- the, uh, _faces_ in the windows, off to the left a bit, and the right is still just- just totally dark. Like, an actual _wall_ of black.” Martin makes a small, discontented noise. “It’s all the same, Jon. Nothing’s worse, but nothing’s better, either.”

Something bitter rises in the back of Jon’s throat, but he shoves it back down. He can feel the annoyance of that which watches him emblazoned on his skin as he does so. Quietly, he says, “Thank you, Martin.”

The footsteps reapproach the bed, and then there’s a gentle hand resting against Jon’s cheek, just shy of the bandages that wrap around what used to be his eyes. “Of course.”

Martin must have jostled the Admiral, because he gives an indignant mewl as he shifts on Jon’s lap, his tail flicking once across Jon’s chin as he readjusts and settles back down. With a bit of humor that is, at its core, undercut by a heavier sadness and by what might be guilt, Martin says, “Well, I suppose I should let the two of you rest, then. I’ll be over- um, just- just call if you need me.”

“Will do.” Neither of them can _rest,_ technically, but it’s the thought that counts, Jon supposes.

Martin’s footsteps recede, pause for a moment, and then continue past the door and onto carpet that muffles them. It’s quiet but for the purring of the Admiral and Jon’s own slightly labored breaths.

The eyes are so very, very heavy on him when he’s alone. He supposes it could be curiosity, at what a man who used to be an Archivist may do in a world no longer made for him. It could be anticipation, waiting for fear to finally sprout within him that it can cultivate and grow and feast upon, trapping him within a domain of his own naïve creation. It could be simply pity, if something without form or emotion or existence in the way humanity knows of it can _pity._

Jon can’t Know for sure. Not anymore. But he knows, with growing certainty, that it doesn’t matter. Whatever he had been to this world, it hadn’t mattered in the end; the linchpin had been removed, but the structure had learned to stand on its own, and it laughed at the tool that had given up its very existence because it thought itself essential.

Perhaps the eyes are full of humor, as they look down at what had once been theirs. But as their gaze settles upon Jon like a swarm of buzzing flies, it doesn’t feel humored, or pitying, or curious, or anticipatory.

It just feels hungry.


	28. parted with sugar breath

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No.27 prompt: _~~un~~ natural disasters_
> 
> cw: body horror, unreality, scopophobia, major character death

There’s something wrong with the sky.

Well, beyond the usual, Martin thinks as he squints upward at the eyes that stare back impassively, unblinking and ever-watching and _fond of him_ , apparently. The _usual_ is a terrible reminder of all that has gone wrong with the world, an ever-present tickle on the back of his neck, a source of tears that turn to salt-rain, sticking his curls to his forehead and making him shiver even as heat rushes to his cheeks and his skin burns slightly under their touch.

The _wrong_ is the cracks that have begun to spread, like spiderwebbed glass, across every eye, radiating from pupil to sclera and seeming, at first, almost like bloodshot veins through which a sickly red light seeps.

“Jon, should- should we be worried about that?” Martin says, giving Jon’s hand a small tug as he stops walking.

Jon stops, too, and gives Martin a concerned glance. “Worried about what?”

Martin looks up, and Jon mirrors the gesture. “Oh,” he says, and his voice is… _confused,_ in a way Martin hasn’t heard in- in _months_ , maybe longer. “I… I’m not sure. When I try to- to know…” He pauses for a moment, concentrating, before letting out a frustrated breath. “It’s still like looking into the Sun. There’s too much of- of _knowledge_ wrapped up in the Eye, and I can’t—”

“Okay, okay. It’s okay.” Martin squeezes Jon’s hand in what he hopes is reassurance. “Just- just looks, um. Bad, is all.”

“Yes,” Jon says quietly, in a voice that makes tendrils of worry begin to grow and twist deep within Martin. “Yes, it does.”

* * *

There’s something wrong with _Jon._

The cracks in the sky are larger now, the red bleeding through enough to cast crimson shadows across the ground, and across the matching fissures that are latticed on Jon’s skin like cracked, dry earth. Martin’s trying very, very hard to stay calm. He really is.

“Jon,” he says, in a voice that is _definitely_ calm, that is _definitely_ not breaking at the edges, or thick with barely-suppressed terror, or pushed out through grit teeth. “Please tell me you know what’s happening now. Because I- I am _very calm,_ but I- I’m starting to _worry_ , just a bit, that- that _this is very bad!_ ”

Jon is staring down at his hands, at the way his skin is split to reveal something very much _not_ muscle beneath, something very dark and very black and very _wrong._ “I…” He trails off, just _staring,_ and Martin breaks, just a bit.

“ _Jon,_ please! Just- just tell me what I need to do.” He reaches, on instinct, for Jon’s hands, stopping himself at the last second. His fingers still brush lightly against the skin of Jon’s hands. It’s dry and hard and brittle around the cracks. Like paper. Martin pulls his hands back, and tries very, very hard not to panic. He mostly succeeds.

“I don’t know,” Jon says, faintly, still enraptured by his skin. “I… I don’t think this is something within the Eye’s control.” Finally, _finally,_ Jon takes his eyes away from his hands and looks at Martin; there are hairline fractures across his irises, spiraling into his pupils. “Martin, I- I’m _scared._ ”

And Martin crumbles. He reaches out and pulls Jon tightly to him, ignoring the way that the brittle cracks in Jon’s skin tickle his neck as Jon’s head settles just underneath Martin’s chin. Jon exhales, a fragile, frightened sound, and wraps his arms tightly around Martin in kind.

“It’s all right,” Martin says. They both know it to be a lie, but Martin repeats it anyway, his eyes closed tightly against the bright red of a slowly crumbling sky. “It’s all right.”

* * *

There’s something wrong with the world.

The sky is breaking apart in pieces, and what lies behind it is red only in the way that heat is red, or anger is red, or blue is red. Which is to say that it is not red at all, and maybe never was.

“It’s- it’s the absence of everything,” Jon had said, in a voice saturated with wonder as the first pieces of himself began to fall. “It’s the edges of reality, and- and what comes after.”

“Jon,” Martin said, voice trembling, “what does that _mean_?”

A fissure on the side of Jon’s neck gaped wide and slipped away, leaving behind a blackness so deep Martin could barely stand to look at it. Jon just stared up at a sky that broke in tandem with him and said, “It means that it’s over, Martin. All of the- the suffering, and the fear, and the pain. It’s all _over._ ”

He said it with such reverence, such _peace,_ but also with a trembling pain, and it made a sickness twist within Martin’s stomach. “Over, as in better, or- or over, as in _over?_ Because right now, it- Jon, it looks like the world is _dying._ ” _It… it looks like **you’re** dying._

Another piece of Jon shuddered and flaked away, and Martin couldn’t stand it anymore. “Jon- Jon, _look at me!_ ” He placed a hand on the side of Jon’s face, the skin brittle and breaking under his touch, and turned it with all the gentleness he could muster under white-hot fear to face him. Jon’s eyes slipped from the sky and came to rest on Martin’s face, and they were nothing but black. They cut through Martin to his very core just the same. “ _Please,_ Jon. Please tell me that- that we can fix this! That this isn’t- this isn’t you just, just _giving up_ , or- or saying that it’s _okay_ that everything’s falling apart!”

Carefully, Jon brought a hand up to cover Martin’s. It was all dark now, a formless thing that Martin could barely stand to look at, so numb it burned Martin’s skin, sending a radiating static through him from its point of contact. “I… I’m sorry, Martin. This- this reality, it’s breaking. It was never meant to hold something this- this _formless,_ yet this infinite. And the fear, it… it just makes them grow. Eventually, it… it just became too much.” Jon laughed once, dryly. “I can see it all now. The pressure, the- the strain on reality. It’s falling apart under its own weight.”

In a voice falling apart all on its own, Martin said, “Jon, what’s happening to _you_?”

The smile Jon gave him was too fractured around the edges to be genuine—to be anything but, at its core, purely, deeply afraid _._ “I’m… I suppose I’m falling apart as well,” he said, in a voice choked tightly by terror. “It- it doesn’t hurt though. It… it feels like nothing. Like I’m becoming nothing.”

“No,” Martin said, his brain desperately trying to process a world where Jon was _nothing_ and coming up empty. “No, no no no, _no._ No, just- just hold on, Jon, we- we can fix this.”

Jon’s other hand came up and gently cupped Martin’s cheek. Static filled his mind—the kind from a television, left to sit on an empty channel, or from a radio station long since lost, or from an arm propped under a head too long as they lay in bed, talking for hours about fantasy books and favorite flavors of ice cream and which shade of blue was the best. It hurt, because it felt like loss, and it settled deep within Martin’s chest and bit into his heart with sharp, merciless claws. “I’m sorry, Martin,” he said, rubbing what might have still been a thumb over the curve of Martin’s cheek. “But there’s nothing left to fix.”

Martin can still feel the static, curling within his chest and spreading up through his cheek and into his mind, blurring his vision and turning his thoughts inside-out and backwards as the world fractures into a million shards of where and when and _not._ But Jon’s gone now. There’s only the dark, and the red, and the not-dark, and the not-red, and the slow dissolution of everything that is.

A crack spreads through the sky and the earth and into Martin, and he feels it tug at all he has left of himself, unspooling the loose thread in the fabric of reality that he’s become. For a moment—the last moment that Martin is still Martin, and it is still possible to _be_ —he wonders if it had been worth it, in the end. To leave that cozy cabin, those last vestiges of something that called itself comfort, searching for a way to fix a world that was never destined to survive.

Then, he is undone, and the world, in its last moments before it, too, is lost, forgets that there had ever been a Martin Blackwood.


	29. shattered glass

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No.28 prompt: _accidents_
> 
> cw: eye trauma, blood/gore

Jonah’s dead, when the dust finally clears and the eyes on Jon’s skin finally wink closed and he reduces, once again, from _the Archivist_ to Jonathan Sims—or, at least, as close as he can get anymore. Jonah’s eyes—eyes that have stolen so many bodies that didn’t belong to them and that have, for so long, watched suffering with sickening indifference—are now reduced to ash, crumbling under the gaze of the monster they created. Jon thinks he should probably be more surprised when the dust settles on a world unchanged, that he Knows has not noticed the loss of such a small man as Jonah Magnus. But he always knew, in the end. That killing Jonah wouldn’t change anything. But it had felt…

It had felt like a final retribution for everything lost. For Sasha, and Tim, and a world full of those who had had even less of a choice in their transformation and consumption than Jon.

Martin, at least, will be glad to finally see Jonah dead, Jon thinks as he sighs and turns away from the broken man who thought himself a king. Martin, who was used by Jonah just as much as he had been. Martin, who had sacrificed so much to bring about every step on their way here, every small victory dwarfed by immeasurable pain and loss. Martin, who…

Who is slumped against the wall, blood running in twin trickles from the corners of his eyes, and who is lying very, very still.

“Oh, god,” Jon says, and his voice cracks around the words. Then, he’s kneeling on the ground, one hand pressed against Martin’s face and the other against the side of his neck, feeling desperately for a pulse. “Oh, god, Martin, I- I didn’t—”

A heartbeat flutters against Jon’s fingers, faint but _there._ Relief floods through him, nearly eliciting a giddy laugh before it’s overshadowed almost immediately by guilt.

“I did this,” he says, barely audible to his own ears. When… when had it been? When he’d compelled every last half-truth out of Jonah, and the foundations of the Panopticon had started to tremble under their weight? When he’d begun to incant, knowing that in this place of fear, favor and fortune and loyalty meant nothing to that which only wished to witness a world suffer? When the room had begun to crumble and fracture under the strain of a thousand eyes, and he had begun to fracture as well, his body becoming a mirror for that which looked upon him and through him and burned the Sight out of a man who thought himself immortal and protected, up here in his ivory tower.

How long had Martin been here, hurting and broken and alone because of Jon, before he’d finally thought to look?

It makes Jon sick to think of it. He allows himself one more moment of nauseating guilt before he pushes it all down, deep within, and focuses on the heartbeat.

“It… it’s okay,” Jon says, even as it’s not, even as a thumb gently pushes one of Martin’s eyelids up to reveal nothing but slick red. His hand jerks away like’s he’s been burned. “It… it’s going to be—”

A slight intake of breath is the only warning Jon gets before Martin coughs, once, a wet and broken sound that has terror curling in Jon’s stomach again, heavy and ice cold.

“ _Martin!_ ” Jon says, and his hand goes to support the back of Martin’s head even as the cough subsides into ragged breathing, hindered by the rattle of liquid in lungs. “God, Martin, I- I’m so sorry, I- can you, can you breathe? It- it’s okay, I- I’ve got you. You’re going to be okay.”

Martin’s eyelids twitch, like they’re trying very hard to open but are glued in place, and it seems to take Martin several agonizing tries before he manages to say, in a hoarse voice barely louder than a whisper, “Jon?”

“Yes, I- I’m here.” Jon tries to stay calm, tries to smile reassuringly, even though Martin won’t be able to see it. That thought shatters through his resolve like a bullet through glass, and a small, hitched sob escapes him.

Martin’s forehead crumples in concern, and he moves as if to sit up, but the effort draws a small cry of pain from him. “No, don’t- just, just don’t move,” Jon says, at the same time as Martin says, “Is- what’s going on?”

It’s quiet for a moment, an excruciating silence that coats Jon’s tongue with acid the longer he fails to fill it. Then, in the manner of someone who is preparing themselves for a tragedy they already know has befallen them, Martin says, “My… my eyes. They’re- they’re gone, aren’t they. That’s why I- why I can’t—”

He breaks off, breaths beginning to come in labored bursts, and Jon brings a hand to Martin’s cheek again and tries, despite the lack of it within himself, to restore calm to an increasingly panicked man. The guilt emerges yet again, sharper and more cutting than before, and Jon can’t quite keep it from his voice when he says, “Yes. I… I just, I didn’t… I turned around and you were…”

A small, hiccupping laugh turns abruptly into another cough. “Of- of course,” Martin says, once the coughs have subsided. “I- I looked, of _course_ I looked, I- I wanted to see the, the _moment_ that smug look was—” He coughs again, and Jon’s hand rubs large, soothing circles on his back. “Knew I shouldn’t have,” Martin croaks. “Stupid. But… but when I saw the, the _fear_ in his face, it- well, it didn’t make it _worth it_ , but… you know.” He takes a moment to breathe, to let some of the tension leave his chest. “He’s… he’s dead?”

“Yes,” Jon says quietly. Then, because it feels necessary: “But, Martin, you should- you should know that the world, it’s- it’s not—”

“It’s not any better?” The small frown that finds its way to Martin’s lips is unsurprised. “Yeah, I- I know. I‘ve known for a while, actually. You’re- you’re not as subtle as you think you are, Jon. All those hints, about how removing one person from the equation doesn’t change anything—yeah, I- I got it.”

“Martin, I- I’m so sorry.” Jon looks at the ground, his stomach twisting. “I wasn’t careful enough, I- I _hurt_ you—”

“No, Jon, it’s not your fault,” Martin says, conviction giving strength to his voice.

“But I _did_ hurt you,” Jon says. “Accident or not, it- it _was_ my doing.”

Martin draws in a shuddering breath, and slowly raises a hand, skimming it up Jon’s arm until it comes to rest on the side of his neck, fingers pushing into the hair at the base of his scalp and a thumb brushing lightly against his jawline. “Maybe,” Martin says, in a voice that leaves no room for protest. “Maybe not. Either way, I- I won’t let you blame yourself for this. That’s not- that’s not going to _help._ ”

“Martin,” Jon says in a voice just shy of breaking, “tell me what you want me to do. Tell- tell me how to _help._ ”

Martin’s eyelids twitch again, a long-ingrained instinct still making itself known, and a ripple of pain flashes across Martin’s face. His breath hitches in his chest, and the fingers carding through Jon’s hair curl and stiffen as they’re overcome with a wave of agony that Jon knows, despite Martin’s protestations, is his burden to bear. In a voice tight with pain, Martin says, “Just- just hold me? Please? Just- just for a bit.”

“Oh, Martin,” Jon says, and he folds Martin into his arms. He grips the back of Martin’s jacket tightly, and Martin buries his face in the crook of Jon’s neck, and they both breathe in the scent of iron and salt.

Martin’s chest is shaking slightly, and though Jon can’t feel the wet slide of tears against his neck, he knows that Martin’s crying. “It… it hurts,” Martin says, barely more than a whisper, like a secret told only to himself.

Jon holds Martin tighter, and tries very hard not to Know what it feels like to have sight removed by that which craves it. The memory of melted nerves as that which was not meant to do so observes all that has ever been in the space of a blink comes to him anyway, in a prickle, in a shudder, in a screaming wave of agony and terror and pleading for respite that carves a deep, aching hole within him.

“I know,” he says, and wishes so desperately it were a lie.


	30. every kiss a cursive line

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No.29 prompt: _reluctant bedrest_
> 
> cw: eye trauma, blood/gore, knife violence

“Jon, _no._ ”

Martin’s hands are gentle on Jon’s shoulders, yet firm in their intent as he guides Jon back into the bed. It’s soft, and warm, and Jon doesn’t _trust_ it. “Martin, please, I’m not a _child_ —”

“No, but you _are_ hurt.” Martin’s fingers ghost, almost accidentally, against the bandages covering Jon’s eyes; they leave a tingling warmth where they come into contact with his skin.

_“It’s- it’s fine,” Jon said, even as his head exploded into shards of white-hot pain, even as he felt sticky rivulets of blood begin to run down his cheeks. “It- it’s not enough to separate me from the Eye, not anymore. Not when I…” He thought of the staring, unblinking eyes, lying in wait just beneath his skin, anticipating the moment when they would be forced to emerge. “I’ll survive it.”_

_In a strangled voice, Martin said, “Jon, you’re- you’re still **bleeding.** You’re still **hurt.** ”_

_Jon felt a sadness curl within him, soft and cutting in equal measure. “I’ve been hurt worse.”_

“Like I said,” Jon says, leaning into Martin’s touch despite the clipped tone to his voice, “I’ll recover.

Martin sighs, a begrudging noise. “Yeah, but I can still _worry._ ” There’s a short pause; then, Jon feels a gentle kiss pressed to his forehead. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had to take care of you—not since, um, Daisy, I don’t think.” Another pause, heavier this time. “I… I didn’t think much could hurt you anymore.”

“No,” Jon agrees, “not much. But not nothing. And Jonah… Jonah could.”

Jonah could, because he had built the Archives and their Archivist himself, layering trauma atop injury atop pain and terror until they created a foundation for new hurts to be built upon. He could, because this world was just as much his as it is Jon’s, and he believed himself king over all he could see, including—or, perhaps especially—Jon. He could, because… because Jon had let him. Because it was a familiar pain, a familiar dance, one he’d prepared himself to end once and for all but had instead fallen back into old habit as soon as those cool, calculating eyes met his.

Jon couldn’t hurt Jonah, because part of him still believed he couldn’t. But Martin had no such reservations.

The knife had gone in easily, without protest, and that was it. But Jon had already looked—into Jonah’s eyes, through them, seeing all of his own pain and terror and deepest fears reflected back in a dizzying, infinite refraction of reopened scars and forgotten marks. His vision had blurred in a desperate effort to _stop_ , and crimson mixed with salty tears as he began to weep.

“But now he’s gone,” Martin says, drawing Jon back to the present. His voice is tight and carefully controlled, but Jon can still hear the anger simmering just below the surface, mixed with a desperate relief. “He’s gone, and we’re here, in this- this _very_ normal house, so does- does that mean that things are better now? It- it _seems_ better, but also…”

“… Also a lie,” Jon finishes, and by the short, hitched breath he hears, he knows that Martin agrees. “I- I don’t know, Martin. I can still See, yes, but… but it’s all a bit fuzzy at the moment. My eyes are a bit… _preoccupied._ ”

There’s a small exhalation that might be a hint of laughter or might be a barely-suppressed sigh of frustration. Jon’s not entirely sure. “Which is why,” Martin says, his hand moving down to Jon’s and squeezing it gently, “you need to _rest._ Recover, heal. Even if this place is- is a trap, or whatever, it’s… it’s really all we’ve got at the moment.” Then, with a smile that Jon can hear in his voice: “Besides, it’s been _way_ too long since we took a nap, don’t you think?”

Jon says, with a bit of humor, “You do know we still can’t sleep. This place is still Seen by the Eye, Martin, it’s not like—”

“Yes, yes, it’s not like before with Salesa. I know, I know. Doesn’t mean we can’t rest for a bit.”

Teasingly, Jon says, “You know, Martin—it’s a two-seater.” He pats the bed next to him twice.

He can’t see Martin’s face, but from the loud groan he lets out, he just _knows_ that Martin has that sour look he gets when he’s heard a particularly bad pun, or tasted a particularly bad cup of tea, or been reminded of a particularly bad decision. “Are you _ever_ going to let that go?” he says as the covers shift and the bed dips next to Jon. “I swear, you sit on a spooky couch _one time_ and all of a sudden it’s ‘oh, Martin, clearly he’ll sit _anywhere_ , why not the suspiciously clean bed with _down pillows and white sheets in the middle of an apocalyptic hellscape_?’”

“And yet you would have _me_ stay here,” Jon says lightly, even as Martin shifts to lie under the covers, his leg pressing against Jon’s and his hand coming up to brush gently against Jon’s cheek. “Should I be concerned?”

“Nah, I wouldn’t worry about it.” Martin snuggles a bit closer, and despite the lingering pain in his head, Jon leans into the contact, allowing himself to curl around Martin like they had so many times in the safehouse in Scotland. Perhaps in Upton House, too, but the Eye has stolen those memories from him.

He won’t let it take anything else. Not these tender moments, where Jon can feel Martin’s pulse beneath his fingertips and the gentle rise and fall of Martin’s chest beneath him. Not the softness of the sheets and the warmth trapped beneath them as minutes turn into hours and they remain, entangled and contented and safe—or, at least, a facsimile of safety. Not their quiet discussions of hopes and fears and what might happen when the bubble finally pops and whatever has provided them respite finally shows itself to be a sharp-toothed imposter of peace and happiness.

For now, they can have this. And even as Jon feels his eyes begin to itch, and his sight begins to focus into sharp edges tinged with that electrifying fear of a world watched, he curls closer into Martin’s embrace and pretends that this will not end.


	31. ignes fatui

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No.30 prompt: _wound reveal, ignoring an injury_
> 
> cw: blood/gore, knife violence (past), mental trauma (of the Jonah-implants-things-in-your-head variety)

It’s not until they’re far, _far_ away from the Panopticon that Martin notices the blood. Jon shifts the backpack on his back with a carefully hidden wince, and the motion reveals a crimson stain slowly spreading on his side, just barely hidden by his jacket as it falls back into place.

“Jon,” Martin says, nerves spiking his voice a few pitches too high. “Why are you bleeding?”

Jon’s steps falter slightly, and the look on his face is one of a man caught in a lie. “Ah,” he says, which is _not_ an answer. “It… it’s fine,” he continues, which is even _less_ of an answer and, more importantly, _not true._

“No, it is absolutely _not_ fine,” Martin says, taking hold of Jon’s wrist so that he can pull him to a halt, because it definitely looks like Jon is just going to keep walking through an apocalyptic hellscape with an _open wound_ on his side. The motion shifts his jacket again, and Martin can see that the spot of red has gotten bigger, and that Jon seems to be stumbling ever so slightly. Concern shifts to mild terror, and Martin’s voice is significantly less calm when he says, “Christ, Jon, that- that’s not _fine,_ that- that looks _really bad._ ” He lets go of Jon’s hand and quickly shrugs off his pack. He drops to a knee and starts rifling through it, searching for the bandages he knows are still there. “Jon, just- just sit down.”

“Martin, I said I’m _fine—_ ”

“ _Jon. Sit._ ”

Jon sits with a small huff of protest that’s quickly swallowed by a larger exhalation of pain. He slips his pack free from his shoulders and shrugs out of his jacket, at Martin’s request. And, god, it looks _bad._ Martin doesn’t know if he has enough bandages. He pulls Jon’s pack toward him, and begins searching it as well. Trying and failing to school his voice into something just a _bit_ less frantic, Martin says, “What _happened?_ How- how long has it been like this?”

Jon won’t meet Martin’s eyes. Now that they’re sat closer together, Martin can see the slight sheen of sweat on Jon’s forehead, the sickly pallor to his skin. It’s like how it was with Daisy, but worse—much worse, because it’s been like this for _hours,_ and Jon _hadn’t said anything._ Why hadn’t he said anything?

Finally, after a tense pause, Jon says, “I… I didn’t know it would get this bad. In the Panopticon, Jonah, he- he had a knife, and you were- you were still…”

_“Do you want to know how every single person in your domain feels, right now?” Jonah says with a smile of cruel pleasure._

_He doesn’t give Martin time to answer before the dam in his mind opens, and then Martin’s drowning._

“… And when it was over, and I realized that he- he’d been able to hurt me, it didn’t seem… well, it didn’t seem important at the time. I just had to make sure that we were safe, and that- that _you_ were safe, and it just… it slipped away from me. I suppose I thought that with him gone, it would- I don’t know, _heal_?”

Martin begins to peel Jon’s shirt away from the wound, and Jon winces. “It appears,” he says in a voice tight with pain, “that I was wrong.”

“Yeah, appears that way,” Martin says in a clipped tone as he finishes removing the shirt, revealing a deep, jagged slash across Jon’s side, sticky with blood and still weeping red. “Oh, Christ,” he says in a choked voice, because _he doesn’t have enough bandages_ , and this seems like something that should require stitches, at the very least. It certainly doesn’t appear that the Eye has any intentions of making this heal quickly. “Jon, this is _bad._ ”

“Yes, Martin, that much is clear.” Somehow, Jon still manages to sound affronted even as he’s slowly bleeding out from a _knife wound._ “I’m not sure what you want me to do about it.”

“I _want you,_ ” Martin says tersely, “to _tell me_ when things like this happen! Communication, Jon—I can’t know everything automatically, remember? I need you to tell me things. I _want_ you to tell me things. _Especially_ things like this.”

Jon’s expression turns guilty. “Yes, you… you’re right, I’m sorry.”

“No, you don’t have to- to _apologize,_ just—” Martin runs a hand over his face; the wound continues to bleed. “Jon, I think this is going to need stitches.”

“This isn’t going to _kill me,_ Martin—”

“No, but it could come close. And if I can _treat_ it—stitch it closed, bandage it—it’ll certainly be better than just _letting it bleed._ ” Martin forces his tone into something softer as he says, “Just- just let me take care of you, okay? Like… like before, with Daisy.”

Jon looks down, at the way Martin’s hands are fidgeting in his lap with a nervous energy, at the small rivulets of blood running from the wound on his side, and lets out a long breath. Then, he nods, and relief breaks through Martin’s nerves as he finally has a way to _make things better_.

“Okay. Just… hold still, okay?”

For Jon’s part, he hardly flinches as Martin passes the needle and thread he’d found tucked away in his pack— _for sewing emergencies,_ his mind helpfully supplies, because apparently his past self had thought of absolutely every contingency—through his skin, pulling the wound tightly closed. A few douses of hydrogen peroxide and several layers of bandages later, Martin’s pulse has slowed considerably. “There,” he says, and because it would be a bit weird to press a kiss-it-better kiss to Jon’s side, he places one instead on Jon’s forehead. “Was that so bad?”

“Excruciatingly so,” Jon says, deadpan.

“Ha ha.” Martin sits back on the heels of his hands and lets out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. “Let’s just. Just sit here for a bit, okay?”

Jon’s forehead creases slightly, and Martin _knows_ there’s some protest coming about how resting is pointless, or how he’s fine, or how _the journey will be the journey_ , so he says, more firmly, “The apocalypse will still be there in an hour or two, Jon. You’re hurt, I’m tired, so let’s just _sit_. Okay?”

The sigh Jon gives is heavy, and Martin knows he’s thinking about what comes next—where they’ll go now that Jonah is dead, and the world is still unchanged. Martin doesn’t know; he’s been focused on killing Jonah for so long, he hasn’t left much room for anything else. He can tell that Jon doesn’t know either, by the way that his eyebrows furrow in uncertainty and his eyes focus on a point far away, searching all that the Eye can see for a next step, for a beginning to an end.

Still, Jon nods, and gives Martin a small, weary smile. “Okay. Just for a bit.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> only one more prompt to go...


	32. closing circles, shutting doors

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No.31 prompt: _left for dead_
> 
> cw: major character death, manipulation, panic attacks (not in graphic detail)

_“Jon, **no.** ”_

_Jon looks pointedly at the collapsed stone that had once been the Panopticon; deep, buried beneath layers of rock and shattered glass, lies a man who had been far, far too easy to kill. “Martin, we don’t really have many other options at the moment.”_

_Martin doesn’t look impressed. “Can’t you just- just **know** our path? You were able to get us **here** just fine.”_

_“Because we had a goal, a- a direction. Now…” Jon tries to Know—what they need to do to fix the world, what domains they’ll have to cross, what burdens they’ll have to bear. The Eye looks back, and gives him nothing in return. Perhaps it isn’t keen to relinquish a world built for its benefit and remade in its name. Or perhaps it, too, simply does not know how to cause its own demise. “… I- I can’t Know where to go if we don’t have a destination.”_

_“Perhaps then you would be keen to hear what I have to offer,” Annabelle says benignly, the webs laced over one side of her head just visible beneath the brim of a deep purple cloche hat with a tiny woven spider on the side. “Unless, of course, you would prefer to simply… wander.”_

_Martin’s glare could freeze the ocean. “Don’t pretend like you actually want to help.”_

_“I am not **pretending.** ” Annabelle’s light smile morphs into mild annoyance. “If I wanted to hurt you, I could have done it in Salesa’s little oasis when you were cut off from your patron. Believe me when I say that there is only one way that this story ends, and it is with **my** help.”_

_“Martin,” Jon says, with no small amount of reluctance, “I believe her.”_

_Martin’s mouth opens, clearly ready to fire off another protest, but then he meets Jon’s eyes and apparently sees something genuine in them because he pauses and, slowly, begrudgingly, says, “Fine. Fine, let’s- let’s just get on with it then. The sooner we do this, the sooner the world goes back to normal.”_

_Annabelle smiles tightly, with no remaining humor. “Excellent. Then follow me.”_

* * *

There isn’t a basement at Hilltop Road anymore—not really. Now, there’s just the crack—that tear in reality, one that itches at the back of Jon’s mind as he stands just at the edge of it, staring in with eyes that search the darkness for any semblance of order and Eyes that cannot see past a world that they have claimed as their own.

“Careful,” Annabelle says, her voice smooth and controlled and just a bit teasing. “Get too close, and you’ll fall in.”

“Isn’t that rather the point?” Jon says quietly, not looking away from the yawning pit of unknown quantities in front of him. He feels that _tug_ , one he hasn’t felt in so, so long. To _learn._ To _know._ To take a mystery in front of him apart bit by bit, removing what has been hidden and laying it bare.

It’s been such a long time since he’s been able to be so purely, deeply curious. And he’s missed it like a drowning man misses air.

“Quite,” Annabelle says with a smile that feels the opposite of friendly. “But there are so many paths to take—would you know which to choose, Archivist? Which threads to pull?”

“And you would?” Martin says. He’s stood further back than Jon, halfway back up the stairs to the main part of the house; his face is shadowed, but Jon can still see the sour expression on it.

“Yes. That _is_ what I specialize in, after all. And this is still _quite_ a significant place of power for the Mother of Puppets, despite the… _influence_ of other forces. Though, we’re not so different, are we, Jon? A Spider has so many eyes, after all. So many events, so many paths, so many different ways to traverse a web—and only one Eye. Choose one route and you can see _everything,_ yes, but choose the wrong one?”

Annabelle snaps her fingers, a crisp sound that echoes through the basement for far longer than it should. “So, will you follow the path I choose for you, Jon? Or will you choose your own and hope it doesn’t condemn you?”

Martin’s mouth is pressed in a flat, nervous line. “Jon, you can’t _possibly_ be considering going through with this. It- it’s the _Web,_ for Christ’s sake. Jon?”

Jon’s still looking down, and down, and down. He thinks… he thinks there’s something there, just out of sight. And he so, so desperately wants to see. “I… I have made so many choices,” he says slowly, not taking his eyes away from the swirling depths below. “Some made in ignorance, some in fear, and some… some in anger. But none of them mattered, in the end.” He blinks, and he sees Tim, eyes ablaze with determination born of pain and loss as he holds a detonator aloft amidst glitching colors and nameless things of skin and wood. He sees Sasha—or, rather, the thing that had consumed and replaced her, leaving him with only false memories and a deep, itching paranoia. He sees Daisy, lost to that which she tried so desperately to resist, and Basira, left with nothing else to do but fulfill a final promise. And it aches, to think of loss, and to suffer the guilt that accompanies it even now, when he’s finally admitted to himself that _choice_ is not so important as _consequence._ So, he knows that he means it when he says, “There’s never really been a choice, has there? I- I broke the world, and so I need to be the one to fix it. Whichever path that takes me down—that’s the one I choose.”

“What?” Martin’s voice is shrill with disbelief. “How- how do you even know that she’s- she’s not just going to- to send you down the wrong one, to let the world _stay_ this way? Not every avatar is as- as _keen_ to see the world back to how it was as you are, Jon.”

“No,” Jon agrees, finally looking away from the open doorway whose threshold he is stood upon. “But the Web was never going to settle for second place, was it? I can’t imagine a puppeteer enjoys having its strings pulled by another.”

Annabelle’s smile is thin. “It has been lovely, getting a chance to talk again, Jon. But I’m growing impatient. Will you or will you not do what I ask? The choice is, of course, yours.”

“No,” Jon says. “It’s not. But I will.”

Martin looks stricken. Annabelle just looks pleased. She tells him the way in crisp words that leave no room for discussion—an instruction. Something to find. Something to bring back. Something to ‘close the circle’ she says, with a small smile akin to that of someone who’s just told a joke and finds themself very funny indeed. Something that can only be done alone.

The door opens, and Jon steps through.

* * *

_He can’t breathe._

_There’s no fear here, no Sight, no Eyes upon his back, and he can’t **breathe.**_

_The door is shut, and refuses to open._

_Jon sits in a basement, faintly illuminated by sunlight that filters in through a small window near the ceiling, on a floor that is just a floor and against a wall that is just a wall, and feels the first parts of himself begin to slip away._

* * *

Jon is swallowed by the dark in a shuddering, twisting sensation that makes Martin dizzyingly nauseous, and his eyes squeeze shut in an instinctual effort to relieve some of the pressure.

When he opens them again, it’s… it’s wrong. It must be, because there’s no pulsating darkness, no crack running through a concrete floor—just a floor, and just that musty darkness that one finds in the basement of a home that has not been inhabited for a very, very long time. Martin blinks, once, then again, like that might bring it back—that fractured reality, through which Jon had slipped in search of an answer, through which he was meant to _return_ —

“What,” he says in a voice pushed almost to the edge of breaking, “did you do?”

Because Annabelle’s still standing in the corner, her eyes fixed on the floor with something close to remorse but missing the mark in every way that matters. She’s there, and Martin’s here, and Jon _isn’t_.

She looks at him, one corner of her mouth slanted downward, and Martin snaps.

“What did you _do?_ ” He takes a few angry steps closer, stops, and tries desperately to calm his increasingly rapid breathing. “Where- where did it go? How- how is Jon supposed to come _back_ if there’s- if there’s no _door,_ how can he- how, how can he… what have you _done?_ ”

In a voice carefully neutral, Annabelle says, “What I had to. There has only ever been one way to rewind the clock, Martin. _One_ way to set things back on the correct path. And it can’t happen in a world where there’s still an Archivist.”

“ _What?_ ” Martin takes a small, stumbling step backward; his foot catches on the corner of the stair, and he barely catches himself on the handrail. His wrist bends painfully, but he barely notices. “You… you knew he wouldn’t be able to…?” His mind is a swirling mess of terror and anger and agony, a million different words battling for dominance. All he manages to say, after a few moments of failed efforts, is: “You- you’ve _killed_ him.”

“No. I’ve _removed_ him.” Annabelle’s face is twisted into something resembling pity, but like that of someone who’s only heard it spoken of in hushed, disbelieving whispers. It’s an ugly thing; Martin wants to rip it from her. “Living or dead, Jon would still serve his purpose in maintaining this world as it is. An Archive’s heart need not beat, after all. Were he to die, he just would have been reborn anew as the Eye saw fit. The _only_ way to restore order to the world was to remove him completely.”

“No,” Martin says, barely a whisper. “No, no, _no._ ” Then, louder: “Bring- bring him back. I- I don’t care if things don’t change, just- just _bring him back!_ ”

It feels terrible to say—that he’d rather see the world continue to writhe in agony than lose Jon before he’d even known to say goodbye. But it’s how he feels all the same. That small spark of hope, just before Jon had stepped over the precipice and fallen in, that there might actually be a way to fix things just makes the hurt that much deeper.

“I can’t.” Annabelle turns away from the floor, away from Martin, toward the stairs. “That’s not how this works. This place has always been a one-way journey, Martin. There is no reopening a door that has been closed—not here.”

She begins to cross the room, to ascend the stairs, and _no, no, this can’t be it, this can’t be all that Martin gets._ He reaches out and grabs at her wrist with a sudden rage. “Don’t you _fucking_ look at me with- with whatever you’re calling _pity_ and tell me that you can’t bring him back! You _did_ this, you- you have to _fix_ it!”

Annabelle’s eyes are cold as she affixes them to him, in a way that freezes his muscles and arrests his motions beyond that of the rise and fall of his chest and the rapid-fire beating of his heart. She removes her wrist from his stiff hand with ease and says, flatly, “No, Martin. I don’t. I’ve done what I had to, and Jon has done the same. There’s nothing left to do but wait for the world to fix itself.”

And then she’s gone. Martin’s not sure how long it is before he can move again; he only knows that one moment he’s frozen, and the next he’s outside Hilltop Road, staring up at a sky that’s folding in on itself as eyes wink out one by one and hearing the dying screams of a world that has no place left in which to store its terror.

The world crumbles, and Martin crumbles alongside it.

The world begins to rebuild. Martin does not.

* * *

Martin’s writing poetry again.

His therapist would be proud, he thinks with a wry smile as he sits against the base of a tree in that park he likes that overlooks the pond, a notebook that’s gone neglected for years propped up on his knees. The letters are shaky and hesitant, his words rusty and out of practice, but he manages to get a few lines down. They’re about the feel of the grass beneath his hands, and the little blue beetle that’s currently making its way up his trouser leg, and the way the wind brings with it the smell of rain. Right now, though, the sun is shining brightly, making it just warm enough to sit outside despite the rapidly declining temperatures as the end of October approaches. It refracts off the leaves above Martin, sending dappled light onto the pages of his notebook, and it’s all so beautiful it hurts.

Jon would like this, he thinks offhandedly. He’d never gotten enough sunlight with all those hours spent in the Archives, but in Scotland they’d gone on walks through the rolling hills, and Jon had admitted that he’d always loved the feeling of the sun on his face, had missed sitting outside for lunch like he did in uni. Scotland doesn’t really exist anymore; the lines have all blurred now, the memory of a life of pure fear erasing the need for a lot of things that had seemed essential before. But the sentiment is the same.

Martin tries to write, thinking about how the sunlight would illuminate the grey streaks in Jon’s hair, but the words won’t come. It’s been years, and the words still won’t come.

He allows himself to think, just for a moment, that it’s not fair. That the world has gotten the chance to regrow, in bursts of greens and pinks and yellows and vibrant life, and that he has been allowed to regrow alongside it, and that Jon _hasn’t_. That Jon had been taken from him, and that he hadn’t gotten the chance to say goodbye, and that he still can’t shake himself free from guilt and heartbreak and mourning.

Somewhere in the distance, there’s a burst of laughter, cutting through birdsong and chittering insects, and Martin pulls himself free from his thoughts. He’s run through them again and again, in the bright daylight of the early morning and in the indigo hues of twilight and in the shadowed black of night where it seemed like he was the only one awake, shaking with sobs as he sat in a bed that felt so very, very empty. It doesn’t make anything any better, to linger on them. It doesn’t change anything.

Jon is still gone. And Martin is still here. Alone, but not lonely. Never again lonely—not when he’s surrounded by so much life, so much light and growth and happiness, even if it still feels like it’s not meant for him.

He knows he’ll get used to it here. He just wishes…

No. There’s really no point in wishing anymore, is there? There’s only _this_.

Martin looks out over the pond, at the way the wind sends shivering ripples over the water, interrupted only by the gentle glide of ducks and the splash of skipping stones thrown by children who remember the dark but embrace the light all the same. Then, he puts pen to paper, and begins to write.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 31 prompts and 43k words later, we've made it to the end! I've enjoyed working on this so much this month, and every single comment and kudos has given me so much joy 💛
> 
> I've come such a long way since October 1st, when @doubt_thou_the_stars said, "Oh, it's Whumptober!" and I said, "What's Whumptober?" It's been challenging to do a month-long event and write one prompt per day, but I'm so glad that I was able to stick with this! Thank you all so much for reading 💛 💛 💛

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr [@bluejayblueskies](https://bluejayblueskies.tumblr.com/)


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